


Open Circle

by tainry



Category: Transformers: Prime
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, F/M, Kink Meme, M/M, Multi, Other, Sticky Sexual Interfacing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-01-25
Updated: 2016-06-14
Packaged: 2018-03-09 02:08:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 69,597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3232310
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tainry/pseuds/tainry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Optimus Prime wishes to enlist the aid of the Nuns of the Solian Order to fight the Senate, and his former friend, Megatron. But the virgin Nuns require that he must first pass three trials...and then he must deflower them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Ascent

**Author's Note:**

> Original request: http://tfanonkink.livejournal.com/7561.html?thread=7396233#t7396233
> 
> Voyeurism, exhibitionism, light bondage, orgy, m/m, f/m, sticky, religious themes, virginity/defloration, size kink, copious fluids, fisting, double penetration, forking, f/f, direct and indirect participation of deity, no really fluids _everywhere_. 
> 
> Optimus/Autobots. Smokescreen/Jazz, Smokescreen/Jazz/Prowl, Perceptor/Bee, Kup/Wheeljack, Tracks/Springer, Blurr/Mirage, Hot Rod/Thundercracker, Ratchet/Ultra Magnus, Optimus/Prowl, Hot Rod/everyone he can get, Arcee/Cliffjumper, Beachcomber/Skyfire, Optimus/Megatron, Megatron/Seekers, Optimus/Soundwave, Optimus/Soundwave/Megatron, Megatron/Mirage

Hard, cold and slippery was the stone beneath his hands, beneath his feet, against his body. The fastness did not invite intrusion. Handhold, foothold, shift of weight. A crumbling hold would not be the mode of betrayal; by whatever artifice this throat of rock had been forged (of necessity by hands; this planet had no volcanic process to create such forms), the stone could not be cut by any but the hardest and fastest of blades. Black it seemed now in the twilight that served Cybertron as night, but in daylight it had gleamed violet and crimson and sapphire, colors shifting with the angle of view. He had begun the climb at dawn.

There were routes to the top. Those who wished to join the Order had to be able to reach the sanctuary. Approach by air had, as far as Optimus knew, been met with shielding even Megatron’s weapons had been unable to pierce. Megatron had withdrawn the organized effort after a single day. The empty plain around the pinnacle was of no strategic importance. The Order itself was considered by most Cybertronians – if they knew about it at all – to be an obscure sect of fanatics with less than entirely sane ideas. They were only passingly interesting because of the fierceness and lasting success with which they defended their convent.

Records stated that Auricus Prime had taken the most direct and swiftest path. Optimus had chosen to follow Galena Prime, who had approached the Order not in pride, but in humility; with a wonder and curiosity that shone through even the dry prose of the datatrax. 

Handhold, handhold, foothold. Cold pierced him through every contact. He couldn’t feel his limbs properly now, verified each placement with optics and EM readings, every motion balanced with stillness and sheer strength. The narrow ledges he grasped slanted outward; only tension across his frame kept him on the cliff-face. Tension and hope. 

Reaching for another handhold and finding only air, he nearly fell from the shock. He hauled himself onto the lip of the precipice with shaking limbs, willing his processor to shift gears. The climb was done; now he had another, more perilous task. 

A high, curving wall of more obviously wrought stone rose before him. The ledge upon which he stood extended some distance to his right, and he followed it, at last coming to a place where the wall parted, overlapping itself in a passage barely wide enough to admit his shoulders. He scanned the parapets above, but could detect nothing alive. It was an excellent place for an ambush.

Beyond the passage he found himself in a wide, circular courtyard. Simple loggias and hexagonal towers rose beyond the far side. There were no lights from near infrared to ultraviolet, and further scans bounced oddly off the stone, returning garbled data worse than useless. No sound reached his audials but the low moan of the thin atmosphere keening around sharp corners and slim columns. The place seemed deserted. It wasn’t.

He expected the whine of weapons cycling, the heat of fully charged energon blades leveled at his face and chest. He forced his battle protocols to quiet. He was here as a mendicant. As he turned – slowly, hands raised and open – he locked his knees to keep himself from staggering. He had not expected the mechs of the Solian Order to be so beautiful.

Their chromatophores set to patterns of black and white gave them a visual air of uniformity, despite the vast differences in frame and function. Optimus saw it was indeed true that the Order accepted members from any caste and every city. Their grace and calm confidence set his spark spinning faster. 

The ranks encircling him parted for a large mech carrying an enormous storm-hammer. Their leader. Their Magnus, Optimus remembered. Two doorwinged mechs strode at his sides, bearing long, powered spears.

“What is your purpose?” Ultra Magnus asked. 

“I have come to beg your aid,” Optimus said, sternly focusing his mind on his mission. He could feel the resonances of Ultra Magnus’ voice through his entire upper torso. “Too few of us who oppose Megatron and the Senate have any military experience. The legendary skills of the Solian Order—”

“Wrong answer,” the mech on Magnus’ left said. Doorwings low, he and his opposite closed in. 

Twins, Optimus realized. The muted coloration made frame differences stand out. They were of a height, but the visored one was stockier, powerful; while agility and swiftness was written along every line of his more slender brother. 

“Jazz,” said Ultra Magnus. “Prowl, hold. Optimus Prime, you claim to be the Matrix-Bearer.”

“I claim nothing. The Matrix chose me, and resides within me.”

Murmurs ran through the gathered mechs, silenced by Ultra Magnus’ raised optic ridge. “Prowl?”

The slender twin handed his spear to Jazz. Turning his back to Optimus, Prowl spread and lit his doorwings, separating them into glittering shards, extending and fanning them like solar sails. Optimus’ hands ached with the desire to touch them, to touch the upright, narrow back between them. He consciously felt only the lightest of scans, but the Matrix pulsed strongly, hot and eager in his chest. 

Prowl staggered forward, doorwings furling tightly, whirling to stare at him, wide-opticked. Jazz was at his side in an instant, denta bared, both spears leveled at Optimus’ chest. Prowl composed himself and pushed the spears down. 

“The Matrix indeed lies within him,” Prowl said, voice not entirely steady. 

“I can show you if you prefer.” Optimus unlocked his chest armor, allowed the seals of his endoform to release audibly, watching Ultra Magnus’ face. At the Magnus’ nod, he opened, bowing his head and shuttering his optics as his consciousness shifted and the light of the Matrix blazed like a young blue star. 

“All right,” said Jazz, “he’s got the pretty toy. That doesn’t mean he’s the True Bearer.”

“Agreed,” said his twin. Optimus, as he felt the Magnus’ faint touch on his shoulder and closed himself up again, thought there was a note of uncertainty in Prowl’s voice. 

“Let him run the trials,” came a soft, lilting murmur. A small mech sitting unnoticed on a low plinth to one side. Legs crossed, visor a slow, mercury-like ebb and flow of silver. “Core of the world, hey?” 

Ultra Magnus smiled, transfiguring his stern face. “Who agrees?” Mechs around the courtyard nodded or gestured or spoke quiet affirmatives. “Very well. Core of the world.” He reached up and touched the mercury-visored mech’s foot. “Thank you, Beachcomber.”

Beachcomber patted his hand, humming, and returned to his meditative pose. “As above, so below,” he whispered. “This one feels like a bridge.” A bridge of stone, Beachcomber meant. A spar of stronger material, left alone when weaker rock had been worn away around and beneath it. It might hold for millennia, or break beneath the weight of only a few rough cycles.

“He does,” Magnus agreed. He turned to Optimus. “For this you must come within the outermost circle. Do you consent?”

The records said only that Galena Prime – and the other handful of those who had successfully attained the sanctuary – had reached the top, and returned changed. Tests of worthiness were not, however, without precedent in ancient tales. He was keenly aware that every klick could mean lives lost, but this was important, his spark was sure. The nuns here could save all who opposed the Senate and Megatron, by their knowledge if not their direct intervention. If they would but agree to teach his troops…

“I do,” Optimus said. 

Prowl extended an elegant but deathly-hot knife and held the point at the junction of Optimus’ chest plates. “If you harbor fear or anger, malice or treachery, it is better to fall upon this blade than to enter the circle.”

Perhaps he was simply low on fuel after the climb, but ill will was the last thing Optimus harbored toward these people. “I will enter,” he said, unsure of the proper ritual response. This seemed to satisfy Prowl.

“Then in perfect love and perfect trust, be thou well come.”

Weapons retracted or stowed, the mechs of the Order swiftly formed a literal circle around the walls of the courtyard, Optimus and Ultra Magnus in the center. The Magnus gestured and a young scout-frame, smaller than Prowl and Jazz, joined them. The scout tugged on Optimus’ hand and, as the rest of the mechs began to chant, Optimus knelt. 

_Hail! Guardians of the Watchtowers of the East: Sparks of mind and wisdom, avatars of CPU and memory core, Photon. We ask for your guidance and presence. Come to us. Come to us. Come to us._

“There are seven Cardinal Directions,” the scout whispered. “East, South, West, North, Above, Below and Within.” Yellow lines and glyphs of light appeared along the stone wall and courtyard floor, forming part of a complex pattern Optimus felt he half understood. 

_Hail! Guardians of the Watchtowers of the South: Sparks of determination and will, avatars of code and line, Gluon. We ask for your guidance and presence. Come to us. Come to us. Come to us._

Red lines and glyphs continued the pattern to the left of the yellow. The words of the chant made little sense to Optimus, but the voices raised in unison were compelling.

_Hail! Guardians of the Watchtowers of the West: Sparks of emotion and intuition, avatars of spark and energon, Weak Boson. We ask for your guidance and presence. Come to us. Come to us. Come to us._

“We summon the ideas associated with the Directions to inspire us,” the scout explained. “It’s a small meditation; a beginning.” Blue glyphs and swooping lines grew from the red, moving around the nearly-complete circle. 

_Hail! Guardians of the Watchtowers of the North: Sparks of patience and stability, avatars of frame and forge, Graviton. We ask for your guidance and presence. Come to us. Come to us. Come to us._

Green glyphs and concentric whorls joined blue to yellow and the chant faded to silence. 

“The last three directions we will summon tonight without words,” said the scout. “They are Mystery, and you’re not an acolyte.” He smiled a little, both shy and compassionate. 

“I understand,” Optimus said. 

From the four directions mechs came bearing strange vessels. 

“Perceptor,” Ultra Magnus said, gesturing forward the mech from the east. Perceptor approached Optimus and lifted the lid of a wide, transparent bowl. Soft mist rose, billowing away as the liquid in the bowl evaporated.

“Place your hands in the vapor,” the scout whispered. “It’s just hydrogen.” Optimus obeyed, curling his fingers in the weirdly pleasant coolness. Perceptor smiled and withdrew to the east. Once he resumed his place in the circle, he tossed the remainder skyward, leaning into the swiftly dispersing cloud.

“Sunstreaker.”

A brawny mech, warrior caste if ever Optimus had seen one, strode forward from the south, bearing a conical bowl incandescent with light and heat. 

“Go on,” the little scout encouraged. “Molten copper – it won’t hurt as long as you don’t leave your hands in very long.” This was ritual, Optimus recognized, not hazing. 

The heavy liquid heat indeed felt good after the long cold climb, penetrating the strained joints of his fingers. Optimus lifted his hands slowly, letting the metal drip cleanly from his alloy. Sunstreaker regarded him with narrowed optics, but returned to his place in the circle, and poured out the copper in a complex design.

“Seaspray.”

Sturdy and cheerful, the mech from the west offered his round, translucent bowl with a smile. Optimus placed his hands in the liquid within unhesitatingly. Pure benzene, by the pleasant scent and elusive texture. Seaspray returned to his place and with a deft motion splashed the courtyard wall in a wide arc, the benzene glimmering in the light of the circle. 

“Hound.”

From the north came another scout, similar in size and hopeful mien to the one cueing Optimus. In an irregular, hollowed crystal he bore a fine grey powder, glittering faintly in the starlight. Optimus sifted the powder through his fingers, the texture soothingly smooth and cool. Silicon. Hound scattered it in a sine-wave pattern to left and right as he returned to his place.

“Oh!” the scout at Optimus’ side squeaked. “I’m Bumblebee. I’m sorry, I forgot to say earlier!”

“Thank you, Bumblebee,” Optimus said gravely. 

Leaping down from his plinth with startling grace, Beachcomber joined the three mechs in the center of the circle, accompanied by murmurs of surprise. Bumblebee explained that Beachcomber rarely left his plinth, rarely took energon, recharged more rarely still; but in the mental states he thus attained, he integrated intuitive ideas of great power. Ultra Magnus took Optimus’ elbow, drawing him and Bumblebee a small distance aside. 

The ascetic shuffled and stamped, warbling softly to himself, almost a funny little dance. Optimus felt patterned vibrations through the stone, through the metal of his feet. With a series of low clunks, a dark aperture irised open in the center of the courtyard. Beachcomber whirled around it once and stopped. 

“Core of the world,” he said. 

“Core of the world,” the nuns and their Magnus answered. 

“Go in,” said Beachcomber, nodding at Optimus. “Go down. Find what you find.”


	2. The Trial

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The nuns of the Solian Order put Optimus through three Trials to determine if he is indeed the True Bearer of the Matrix.

Optimus approached the hole. He noted Beachcomber had said nothing of coming back up again. He knelt, touching the smooth sides. Adjusting his optics, he found there were niches carved to provide hand and footholds. More climbing. The aperture, however, was much too small for him to fit. Was that part of the test? He scanned the shaft discreetly, hoping such was allowable. It was deep, deeper than his scans could reach, and the stone of the shaft itself threw complex echoes his standard processing software wasn’t equipped to fully interpret. Perhaps he wasn’t meant to go in physically?

It was more than possible, Optimus told himself, for a mech with his background to overthink a puzzle like this. This was the first test. Try the simplest approach and see where that got him. 

Standing, he began to remove his armor. 

The watching nuns murmured, watching him keenly, surging closer in a body until Ultra Magnus lifted his hammer in warning. Optimus froze, one foot in midair.

“My apologies,” Ultra Magnus said. “Please proceed.”

A mostly white mech patterned only here and there with black stepped forward, braving the Magnus’ gaze calmly. “He may need assistance getting some pieces loose,” the mech said. “It’s armor – not supposed to just fall off, you know.” He turned to Optimus. “Name’s Ratchet. Principia Mechanica.”

Their CMO. Optimus nodded. “If it’s permitted?”

“Very well,” Ultra Magnus said, but scowled rather outrageously at Ratchet. 

Optimus finished removing his right greave then knelt to give Ratchet better access to his dorsal armor. The mechanica’s hands were gentle and sure in their task, not lingering overlong under the watchful glare of the Magnus. Standing in bare endoform at last, Optimus nodded his thanks and Ratchet withdrew, grinning cheekily. 

He felt small and light and vulnerable, dermal alloy warm against the chill of the sanctuary’s altitude. Now he would fit, if somewhat snugly. He began the descent.

.oOo0oOo.

In the courtyard, Ultra Magnus tapped the ferrule of his hammer against the stone. “May the circle be open but unbroken,” he said. “Hot Rod, Blurr, Drift, in my office if you please. Yes, now.”

The three young mechs named slumped, groaning amid the chuckles of their elders as the nuns dispersed. The Core of the world trial always took a while. The small daily tasks of the convent were not to be put off, and the sun was rising. Prowl and Jazz posted themselves as guards at the shaft entrance. 

“You were seen on the rooftops,” the Magnus began, once they had reached the sparsely appointed cell high in the northeastern wing that served as office, meditation chamber and recharge berth. He activated a simple screen with the damning security playback. “Again.” 

Hot Rod shuttered his optics. “The shields were up. What harm—?”

“The Seekers are harmless now, are they?”

“No, but…” Hot Rod thought of the one time the shields had not been up. There had been a small explosion (Wheeljack) in the main power junction, which had taken seven or eight breems to repair. He – they – had been lucky it was only Thundercracker that time. The vivid blue Seeker had transformed to his sleek bipedal form, watching the trembling young nuns with more thoughtfulness than the open desire the Seekers usually displayed. He had even landed, opening his mouth to speak; but before an alarm could sound, or the forcefields rise, he had transformed and jetted away, the sound of his engines a low, powerful rumble that still haunted Hot Rod’s recharge cycles. 

“Are not the rituals of hand and eye enough for you?” Magnus was going on. “They have served us well enough these past gigavorns.” 

Blurr and Drift shifted nervously. They knew better than to giggle, but their face plates heated. Touching oneself with hands was permitted. Watching another touch himself was also permitted. The seals over spike and valve were to remain unbreached, however, until the appearance of the True Matrix-Bearer. Nor was kissing allowed, or penetrating the mouth of another with fingers or any other insertable implement. The rules governing the chastity of the Solian Order were there to promote discipline, devotion, focus, blah blah blah, sacred trust, blah blah, fellowship of their community. Whatever. 

And Seekers were so slagging gorgeous. Couldn’t they at least _watch_ them fly? 

“Consider how you would feel if your seals and vows were broken before we find the True Bearer. Would you rather be opened by the Seekers – beautiful they may be – than by the Vessel of Primus?”

Drift looked faintly ill. Of the three, he showed the most proficiency in attaining certain levels of meditation. He could sometimes overload without any tactile stimulation; falling into ecstasy through the evocation of Primus alone. 

“If this Optimus Prime turns out to be the True Bearer,” said Hot Rod, chin jutting, “then we won’t have long to wait.” Blurr stared resolutely at the ceiling. 

“That has yet to be determined,” Ultra Magnus said coolly. “Carrying the Matrix and Bearing are not the same. I trust you have not forgotten Sentinel.”

“No, Magnus,” the three answered in unison. 

“I suggest you spend the next six groons in sincere contemplation of your personal relationships with Primus. Dismissed.”

.oOo0oOo.

The shaft was so narrow and straight and smooth, Optimus was tempted to let himself slide down, braking with pressure from shoulders and knees. But without his armor, that could prove a painful option. He climbed. Down and down. Below the level of the plain, he suspected, though his senses continued to give him unreliable data. 

He firewalled the steady, mocking progress of his chronometer. Patience now, gambling on an outcome that would save the resistance. They were fighting on two fronts; against the old, established order, and Megatron’s violent former gladiator and rebel military forces. Ironhide thought he was crazy, but Optimus’ spark and CPU told him he needed the Order. He had always been good at drawing useful, if sometimes astonishing, conclusions from wildly disparate datastreams. How was recruiting a group of fighting virgins any weirder than a librarian finding himself the leader of a radical militia? And the bearer of the Matrix. It pulsed within him, warm and reassuring. 

Foot, foot, hand, hand. The descent became a physical mantra. He shut off his optics, relying on sonics to alert him to any change in the shaft, any side passages, any sign of the bottom. 

At last his foot encountered air instead of another niche, and sonar returned the echo of a floor three of his heights below. He dropped, landing as lightly and silently as he could. He relit his optics, tuning them to IR for possible signs of life, and UV for greater detail, activating headlamps to the same frequencies. 

Six passages led away from the hexagonal chamber in which he found himself. A maze. Scans bounced around and through the walls, hopelessly scrambled by some property of the stone itself. Rough scratches and more carefully incised glyphs marked both sides of each doorway. He wasn’t the first to venture here. Had marking their path aided his predecessors or muddled their thinking? Cybertronians told direction by GPS beacons and the stars. Down here he had neither. Did it matter which path he took? 

He inspected each choice one by one. Each passage went straight like a spoke for some distance before turning to left or right, up or down. One smelled acrid and foul, as though pools of acid awaited beyond. The one marked by Sentinel Prime’s name-glyph he was tempted to reject out of hand. He would not go that way unless all others presented dead ends. 

Core of the world, Beachcomber had said. Go down. Optimus chose one of the two paths that descended, setting his gyros to record his orientation and progress. He couldn’t tell what lay ahead, but he could find his way back. 

Junctions forced choices at irregular intervals. He kept to his downward course, wondering how long it had taken the maze’s builders to bore the tunnels. This wasn’t like the undercities he’d been to before – newer layers of habitation added atop older, with the older being shored up and reinforced to bear the weight, or already collapsed sections serving as foundations. Much of their planet was thusly honeycombed. The plains surrounding the Order’s fastness seemed to overlie one of the relatively rare strata of bedrock. 

A faint hissing, a chittering stopped him. Many things might have caused the sound, but his processor supplied him foremost with the idea of multitudes of tiny metal claws. 

Scraplets.

He transformed his arms, setting guns to wide dispersal and low power, praying the beams wouldn’t ricochet or bring the walls down. The chittering grew swiftly closer. 

He could outrun them. Was passing the Order’s test worth being eaten alive? 

Closer. A handful of bright shapes appeared around the far corner ahead. 

Dark blue optics, set in spherical heads. Optimus felt a piercing unease that his first action in this test would be to extinguish hundreds, maybe thousands of tiny lives. Vermin, maybe, but living things. 

The swarm paused, orienting on him, on the tasty living metal of his body, the heat signature of his spark. Optimus fired. 

By the scores they dropped; melted, blown to scraps, the damaged and dead alike devoured by their fellows. At first he kept the wave front of them held to a few meters from the corner, but eventually, by ones and twos, a few slipped through, flinging themselves upon him and instantly gnawing their way into his endoform. He slammed himself against the walls to crush them, not daring to slap at them and thereby cease firing. Right ankle, left hip. Bit by bit the damage would add up. One was in his torso, worming its way from his ventral surface. Three attacked his arms, chewing on the power couplings to his guns. Bashing them away sent his aim awry and five more got through. The one in his torso was nearing important hardware; hot energon dripped down his body, along his leg, making slippery the stone beneath his feet. 

He kept firing. The swarm couldn’t be much bigger, could it? What could a huge mass of scraplets survive on down here? They poured through the tunnel at him. The pulse-rifle on his right arm ceased functioning, falling away as the anchoring bolts and power lines were chewed through. The damaged ankle gave and he went to one knee.

A high fluting cry shivered the air. Amidst their frenzy, the scraplets paused, wobbling in midair, halting in mid-bite. The one burrowing into his torso shot out of him like a projectile, joining the rest of the swarm as they retreated back the way they’d come. Optimus sagged to the floor, running diagnostics that flashed red across his vision. His fuel level was edging into “low.”

The chittering returned, accompanied this time by the heavier tread of something much larger. Something with more than two legs. Half-propped against a wall, he raised his remaining gun, and extended the blade on his damaged arm. 

Cybertron was an ancient planet, and things lived in the deeps that few records told of, that no living mech had seen. Composite beasts of metal and stone, discarded components aggregated and gone feral, the occasional experiment escaped from its lab. They ate the planet’s bones, or ate each other, would certainly eat mechs who strayed too far from the surface or the hallowed halls of Vector Sigma and the Well of All Sparks. 

It had at least six legs, perhaps eight, unless those were tails, and it easily massed four times what Optimus did. Twin projections – heads? – reared above its cranial end, ringed with dim violet optics. Its dorsum sprouted a thick cover of long spines. Scraplets scuttled demurely among its feet, followed in a carpet behind it; no longer intent, it seemed, on their primary directive of devouring everything that moved. 

Optimus kept his weapons ready, but he did not want to kill this creature, whatever it was. It trundled toward him, in no hurry. As it came within range it slowed further. The projections or heads dipped, extending toward him with what Optimus would term cautiousness. He heard internal fans whirl, drawing his scent into chemoreceptors. He didn’t feel a scan, but EM sensors were often passive. It gave a low whistle and the scraplets stopped, while it took a few more hesitating steps. Optimus didn’t move.

It smelled of antimony and rust and powdered silicon dioxide. It crept closer, optics flickering, shifting spectra perhaps. Optimus searched for evidence of a mouth or mouths. Teeth, jaws, mandibles, proboscis. The creature was armored below the spines with irregular plates that might conceal anything. The optics focused on the fallen rifle. Sidling forward, the creature extended one of its forelimbs and snagged the gun, dragging it across the stone with a scrape and screech that was jarringly loud in the enclosed tunnel and subterranean quiet. 

An opening appeared between the scales at the junction of the two cranial projections and the creature flipped the rifle into its mouth with its claws. Only a clunk and shush followed, no noisy chewing. Perhaps the creature had a smelter in its belly. Optimus hoped the gun’s power converter didn’t blow. 

He could have laid a hand on its back. He remained motionless. The projections bobbed and wafted over his body, not quite making contact, one pausing near his face before darting away. A metal tendril extruded from below the ring of optics toward the energon leaking from his wounds. It followed the runnels down to the floor where it had puddled and cooled. There the tip of the tendril expanded into a blunt, spongy pad and proceeded to lick the energon from the stone. It shuffled closer still, intent on its meager meal, and now Optimus could see a discontinuity seaming the creature’s left flank. It had been damaged by an energy weapon. How long ago Optimus couldn’t guess. It seemed to be healing, spines regrowing along the boundary, the wound itself shiny and smooth. 

The Matrix remained quiescent within him. Optimus felt this was a truly living thing, not a drone or cleverly programmed tool run amok. Was this what he was supposed to find? Life expressed in ways most mechs could scarcely imagine? Life clinging on even in the farbelow, abandoned and forgotten. Life struggling toward intelligence, consciousness, self-awareness. 

“Hello?”

The creature flinched at the sound of his voice, retreating from a last, faint rim of spilled energon. 

“Are you hungry?”

It snuffled toward him again. Toward his remaining rifle. Lifting a forelimb, it patted almost delicately at the barrel, the optics on one of the protrusions watching Optimus’ face. The tendril withdrew and the central mouth opened. 

Ironhide would have his aft if he lost both guns down here. The creature patted the barrel again, both sets of optics blinking at him. 

Venting softly at his own folly, Optimus disengaged the rifle’s attachments, letting it slide free and clatter to the floor. The creature flipped the second gun neatly into its mouth and swallowed. 

“Anything else?”

After nosing briefly at his extended blade, the creature blinked at him again, then returned its attention to the last vestiges of cold energon on the floor, tendril licking fastidiously. 

Sheathing the blade, he slowly got to his feet.

The creature shrieked, spines spraying in all directions, and went galloping back the way it had come, scraplets skittering after. 

Optimus had been pinned to the wall. Shuttering his optics and biting his lips to keep from laughing – or swearing – he grasped the spine that had gone clean through his shoulder and imbedded at least a hand-span into the stone wall. With a single jerk he yanked it free, letting himself collapse once again to the floor for a moment. 

He thought perhaps he had had quite enough of this test.

The climb ahead, damaged as he was now, did not appeal, but climb he must.

.oOo0oOo.

Hands lifted him, voices shouted. He was carried out from under the sky, into dimness and warmth. A berth conformed itself to his back, medical lines were attached to his body, hands and scans examined him. First Ratchet’s worried face loomed into his field of view, then Ultra Magnus’. 

Optimus shifted plates on his forearm, withdrew the energon-stained spine and offered it in a shaking hand to the Magnus.

“Didn’t mean to hurt me, I don’t think,” Optimus whispered. “Six legs. Two heads, or optical stalks…not a biologist. Seemed to control the scraplets. What was it?”

“You can discuss ecology later!” Ratchet yelled, shoving Ultra Magnus back. “Scraplets! He’s lucky to be alive, let alone in one piece!”

“Mostly in one piece,” someone said. 

“Out!” Ratchet howled. “Optimus, I’m putting you in light stasis till I get all these holes patched. Three, two, one…”

Pain and voices and consciousness went away.

.oOo0oOo.

“Did I pass?”

Ratchet chuckled and helped Optimus sit up, disconnecting the last of the medical leads. “I’d say so. Beachcomber was pleased you didn’t blame the hexapod for impaling you. Perceptor’s got the spine, in case you were wondering. Wheeljack caught him licking it. Perceptor said he was sampling the molecular composition, but Wheeljack thinks he was ‘practicing.’ Me, I don’t even want to know.”

Optimus tried to pretend he hadn’t heard the last three sentences. 

“I suppose you want your armor back on.”

It was stacked neatly beside the repair berth. Optimus considered the reactions of the nuns to his removing it, and the mischievous look in Ratchet’s optics. “That would probably be best.” 

“Pity.”

Definitely for the best. Ratchet assisted him with the heavy dorsal plates and spaulders. Offered to help with faulds and culets, but Optimus assured him he could manage those by himself. Ultra Magnus came in as if on cue, the moment he had finished. 

“Optimus Prime,” the Magnus said. “I am very sorry you were injured. You were not meant to find anything alive! There must have been a subsidence that opened a communication between the maze and one of the nearby undercities. Hound, Beachcomber and Trailbreaker have gone down to find and seal it, if feasible, and herd the creature back to its proper territory.”

“You sent them down there with scraplets—!?” Optimus stared at him, aghast. Ratchet chuckled.

“I assure you,” the Magnus said, “Trailbreaker renders them quite impervious to scraplet attack.”

“He’s a shieldmech,” Ratchet explained. “We have our weaponsmaster working on replacements for the rifles you lost, by the way. If Perceptor can keep him from blowing the foundry up this quartex.”

“Uh. Thank you.” Optimus wasn’t certain how else to respond, and Ratchet’s fondly impish expression wasn’t clarifying matters. 

“In the meantime,” said Ultra Magnus, stepping neatly into the breach, “if you feel you are ready, we have prepared the second trial.”

Optimus flexed his hands, rolling his spaulders to settle them. “I am ready.”

“I hope so,” he heard Ratchet whisper as Ultra Magnus led him from the infirmary. 

He followed the Magnus down a short ramp to the central courtyard. Faint colored lines and symbols still ornamented the stones in the daylight – the circle was unbroken. The shaft to farbelow was open as well, guarded now by a pair of large mechs Optimus hadn’t yet been introduced to. They were similar in build, with cargo or construction alts. Ultra Magnus nodded to them as they passed on through the courtyard and into an archway opposite. 

Beyond this was a loggia, austere but pleasant. A handful of nuns were gathered at a point midway along its length. As he and Ultra Magnus approached, Optimus could see a very large face peering at them through a window in the loggia wall. Face, hand, and a forearm resting on the window’s sill; all unadorned white. 

Ultra Magnus stopped at the window. “Optimus Prime, this is Skyfire, our Anchor.”

“Greetings, Optimus Prime,” said Skyfire warmly, the laughter he’d been sharing with the other nuns coloring his voice. This was no solemn cleric, scrupulously pious and shriveled.

“Hello, Skyfire,” Optimus said automatically, even as his sensors and CPU were fully processing the white mech’s situation. Wings rose above broad shoulders, to either side of sleek, paired engines. Optimus shifted, trying to get a better look at the rest of the room behind Skyfire. Was there no door? There wasn’t. Large as the window was, Skyfire was huge behind it; there was no way he could use it as an egress. Unable to restrain himself, Optimus leapt forward, laying his hands on the broad forearm on the sill, leaning close and earnest to the gentle face above. “You’re…!”

“A shuttle, yes,” Skyfire said. One of the other nuns snickered and was shoved to silence by his fellows.

“But…!”

“And I’m walled in.” Skyfire placed his other hand atop both of Optimus’. “I’m the Anchor; I have been for many vorns. I may not leave this room, nor may others enter. But it’s restful. I am glad to live my life in prayer and meditation.” 

“I…do not intend any disrespect to your beliefs. But to…cage a flier so…”

“I can see the sky from here, and the stars.”

Optimus turned around. The loggia bordered another courtyard, smaller than the first, and indeed the low wall on the far side did not obscure Cybertron’s bright horizon. There was a skylight in the loggia roof as well. 

“My needs are well attended to,” Skyfire continued. “Everyone comes to talk with me when I’m not in meditation. I’m never lonely. Can you say the same?”

“I suppose not,” Optimus murmured. There were no scratches or claw marks on the inner walls or window. Skyfire’s fields projected nothing but calm, happiness, anticipation, curiosity. He was not an unwilling prisoner. Optimus couldn’t understand why someone would choose to subsume everything they might have done or been, to take up such a circumscribed life, but it did seem clear that Skyfire had so chosen.

“Everyone talks with Skyfire,” Ultra Magnus said. “Confides in him. Most conflicts are mediated not by me, but by him. With far less fuss in most cases.”

Optimus realized he hadn’t been brought this way simply to be exposed to another of the Order’s strange practices. He had been brought this way because everything and everyone came to Skyfire. The shuttle was included in the daily minutiae, in every aspect of the sanctuary’s life as a matter of course. He was their Anchor. Optimus was beginning to see that layers and levels of importance, of authority, of power, could be more complex, more horizontal than he’d ever imagined. He wished he had a lot more time to talk with Skyfire.

“I’ll see you later,” Skyfire said. His fingertips brushed Optimus’ helm in benediction. “All shall be well.” 

Ultra Magnus extended a hand, indicating that they continue onward. Another arch at the far end of the loggia gave into an airy hall with high windows and a low platform in the center. Like everything else in the sanctuary, the hall was constructed of the same dark stone; the architecture straightforward and uncomplicated, scaled to allow a mech Skyfire’s size or larger to move about easily, yet somehow proportioned to evoke a feeling of serenity. There were mathematical formulae for such things, Optimus remembered. The Golden Ratio. Whomever had designed this place had been an inspired genius. 

Upon the central platform a set of four tables had been pushed together to form a broader surface. This supported what Optimus at first thought was a flat projection model of Cybertron with exaggerated topography, but as they drew near he could find no familiar landmarks. 

The slender doorwinged mech – Prowl – that Optimus had met the night…no, two nights before stood at one edge, placing small objects here and there on the map. 

“We have agreed that the second trial is to be of mind and spark,” Ultra Magnus said.

“A game of ‘Helm and Encompass‘,” Prowl elaborated. He assumed a formal posture of attention and offered a data cable from his wrist. “I can link you the rules and basic strategies if you are unfamiliar with them.”

“I’ve read something of the game but never played,” Optimus said, opening a socket in his wrist and accepting the swiftly transferred file. Prowl withdrew his cable hastily, then looked abashed at his rudeness. Virgins. Dear Primus.

“Hmph.” From behind them, Jazz sauntered, frowning at Optimus. He stood close to his twin, arms crossed. “You’ll have to be very lucky then, to win this time. Prowl here’s the best tactician on any ten planets you care to name.”

“Jazz.” Prowl shot a quelling look at his brother, then gathered his composure. “We may begin as soon as you have assimilated the file.” 

Optimus nodded. He walked slowly around the map, analyzing the alien landscape and the particular starting pattern Prowl had chosen for the game pieces. It was a relatively simple arrangement, suitable for a beginner, but providing subtleties an experienced player might take advantage of, Optimus suspected. The strategy file fitted itself neatly into the things Ironhide had been trying to teach Optimus since the war had began. 

There was no time limit. Optimus was grateful. Nuns filtered in and out of the hall, watching for a few moments or several groons. If there was commentary going on they kept it to internal comms, and again Optimus was grateful. He had the feeling Prowl was maneuvering him all over the board, waiting for the most spectacular kill. 

He kept on, though. He didn’t think whether he won or lost the game was what mattered so much as _how_ he chose to play. Old files were surfacing in his memory. There were old rules to this game, which did not directly contradict the rules they were playing by now, but could considerably alter the tenor of the game. Did Prowl know them too?

Optimus reached out and toppled his last Helm piece. He’d lost, technically. 

Prowl’s doorwings went up in surprise. Then down sharply as he scanned the entire board, checking and rechecking. Up and back – and Prowl was laughing. Mechs came running into the hall. 

“Well done,” said Ultra Magnus.

“Beautifully done,” said Prowl, optics shining. “Compassion and mercy beyond hope. That’s…that’s an ancient heuristic.”

Optimus suspected he should stop staring, but Prowl’s smile and open admiration were like fine high-grade, dizzying warmth suffusing every line and component of his frame. “As I said,” he found himself murmuring rather shyly, “I’ve read a little about the game.”

“So, he won by losing?” Bumblebee asked, peering at the last few standing pieces. 

“He surrendered,” Prowl said, pointing to the fallen Helm piece. “But see the Mirror pieces here, here and here?”

“They’re…behind your lines,” Bumblebee murmured, still not quite understanding. The function of each piece could change, depending on what other pieces were nearby and where they were on the board. 

“Right. Well into my territory. And what pieces are beside them?”

“The…no, wait, when they’re in opposing territory those become Magni.”

“Exactly. He surrendered his offensive line of play, but his defense was to integrate the secular and religious moieties of both of our territories. I conquered in name, but he had already made our peoples into allies.”

“And that’s cheating,” Jazz said. “You can’t do that. Those Mirror pieces are Spoils, not Solar Arrays.”

Prowl moved to his twin’s side, took one of Jazz’s hands in both of his own. “In the ancient codices, they can be either. We didn’t specify that they couldn’t. I assumed I was facing an ignorant novice. My mistake.”

One Optimus suspected Prowl wouldn’t make again. “I am a novice at this particular game,” he said. “I had not played it before. But the principles upon which the rules of play are based are ideas with which I have indeed gained some experience.”

“I bet!” Bumblebee giggled. “That means he passed the second trial, right?”

“Yes, Bumblebee, he passed.” Ultra Magnus smiled at the young nun, but his fields were drawn in against his plating, close and troubled. “The third trial will begin in the morning.” He turned to Optimus, but could not long meet his optics. “You would do well to refuel and recharge as thoroughly as possible before then.”

“What’s the trial?” Jazz asked.

“The trial of the Cord,” Ultra Magnus said, and, whirling on his heel, left them.

.oOo0oOo.

Ultra Magnus stood at his desk, but he did not call up screens or open his log. The trial of the Cord would be as difficult on his nuns as on the presumptive Bearer. It would be worse if Optimus failed. He had consulted with Skyfire, Ratchet and Kup, and this was the trial they had selected. If Optimus succeeded, the next phase would be that much easier, Ultra Magnus understood that. 

He moved to the window, with its view out over most of the sanctuary and the troubled skies of Cybertron. If Optimus passed, he and the nuns of the Solian Order would leave their sanctuary and go to war, fighting for a possibly hopeless cause; risking their lives. Losing some, maybe all of them. Using violence against violence while espousing peace. Yet Optimus’ mode of play in the second trial haunted him. 

Optimus’ impassioned speech to the Senate had moved them, entrenched and corrupt as they were, to name him Prime. The Matrix had bestirred itself, choosing its carrier more actively than it had for a megavorn. Ultra Magnus could ignore these whispers and portents no more than he had the faint rumbles of unrest among the miners and the beastforms and other low-caste Cybertronians. The Order was physically isolate. That did not mean they were ignorant of events in the outside world.

Like Skyfire’s window, this one could be sealed by force fields during acid storms or attack. At the moment, though, Ultra Magnus needed the cold wind in his face, and he opened his venting systems wide.

He had passed the hexapod’s shed spine to Perceptor quickly. He had washed and washed his hands, but he could still feel Optimus’ energon on his fingertips.

.oOo0oOo.

Optimus rose as dawn lightened the clerestory windows in his small, bare cell. Ratchet had offered him the infirmary to rest in, and several of the nuns had offered to give up – or share – their cells, but finally Bumblebee had solved the problem by leading him to this unused chamber high in the southeastern wing. 

None of them would explain what this “trial of the Cord” was. There had been enough giggling and sly looks exchanged that Optimus felt fairly certain it couldn’t be too dire. 

He opened the door and found two nuns already waiting for him with full cubes of energon. Hound, from the circle ceremony, and a burly black mech with only a few dots and dashes of white here and there on his chassis. 

“This is Trailbreaker,” Hound said, handing Optimus his cube. “That hexapod was really interesting! I’m glad you didn’t hurt it.”

Trailbreaker nodded and offered his cube once Optimus had finished the first. “Me, too. It was kinda cute, actually, the way it meeps around with all those scraplets bouncing at its feet.”

“Ha,” Hound laughed. “You only think scraplets are cute because they can’t get through your forcefields.” He took both empty cubes from Optimus and collapsed them. “So, anyway, the maze is safe for Contemplation again.”

“Beachcomber goes down there every other voor or so and walks the tunnels,” Trailbreaker explained. “Thinking with his feet, he says. Hound and Drift and I like it, too.”

“But not Perceptor!” Hound laughed. “Oh, um, we should probably get going. Trial. Thing. You know.” Hound gestured vaguely, his faceplates heating. 

“After you,” Optimus said.

They led him back to the hall where he had played “Helm and Encompass” against Prowl. The central platform was now empty, but a steel chandelier had been lowered from the ceiling above it. Ultra Magnus and several nuns were already there. 

“Good morning, Optimus Prime,” said Prowl. He and his twin carried heavy coils of what looked and scanned like cable made of pure gold. 

“Good morning,” Optimus replied, joining Prowl, Jazz, Ultra Magnus and Ratchet on the platform. Jazz growled, ignoring the look this garnered him from Ultra Magnus. 

“You are well rested and refueled?” Ultra Magnus inquired, his tone rather stiffly neutral. More and more nuns gathered around them, gradually filling the hall.

“I am,” Optimus said.

“Then let us begin the trial of the Cord.” The Magnus led Optimus to the center of the platform and bade him kneel. “You are to remain sensually aroused and responsive, but you are _not_ to overload, while each of us in turn attempts to induce you to do so.”

Optimus blinked. “You’re kidding.” He estimated there were half a hundred nuns in the Order, including Skyfire, who for now seemed to have remained in his Anchorhold. 

Murmurs flew around the hall. They had not considered that Optimus might not be agreeable to engaging in such an activity. Weren’t normal – meaning not of the Order – mechs voracious? It seemed to be the only thing people attacking their sanctuary ever wanted. 

“I’m willing,” Optimus said, holding up his hands. “I just don’t understand what the point is from your perspective.”

“We are the Sworn Bondmates of Primus,” Ultra Magnus said. “We may not interface with any but Primus, until the True Matrix-Bearer, the Vessel of Primus, has initiated us and thus gives us permission to taste fully the pleasures of the metal.”

“You’re…I…what?”

“If you are successful in the trial, you will initiate us. Thereafter we must make ourselves erotically available to you at any time.”

Optimus smiled, finding himself firmly on both feet again. “Does that not imply that I must make myself erotically available to you as well?” His smile faltered at the expression that came over the Magnus’ face. Optimus reached out, clasping the tall mech’s hand. “Ultra Magnus? Are you all right?”

“I am well,” Ultra Magnus said, removing himself from Optimus’ reach. “Please proceed.”

Prowl and Jazz came forward with the golden cables. With smoothly coordinated movements, they tossed loops of the cables over the arms of the steel chandelier, then set about winding the ends around Optimus’ arms, drawing them upward over his head. Being of unalloyed gold, the cable was supple but not very strong. He could break free if he wanted to, but these bonds were ritual, not punitive.

“You may find it’s helpful to have something to hold on to,” Ratchet whispered as he inspected the cables and Optimus’ arms and shoulder gimbals, making certain he wasn’t too uncomfortable. Optimus discovered he could indeed grasp the lengths of cable leading up to the chandelier. He vented deeply, and firmly stamped on the fleeting thought that he hoped tickling wasn’t allowed. How hard could it be to remain politely interested but calm while a flock of inexperienced virgins groped him? 

The rest of the nuns formed a circle around the platform, watching with hot optics, and more than a few fans already whirring. Ultra Magnus tapped his hammer on the floor to divert their attention.

“The strictures yet apply,” he reminded them sternly. “You may use hands. You may not kiss him. You need not restrain your fields – Trailbreaker, I trust you will use your best judgment in this matter. You may not penetrate his mouth or valve, nor use his spike, his fingers, or your fingers to penetrate your own. Once you overload you must step down, but you need not continue until overload if you do not wish to. If you do not wish to participate in this trial at all you may withdraw; and it would be kind if you were then to keep fellowship with Skyfire. If Optimus overloads the trial is over. Understood?”

“Yes, Magnus,” the nuns chorused. 

Perhaps, Optimus thought, he had been hasty in classifying them as “inexperienced” virgins. 

Ultra Magnus handed his storm-hammer to Prowl, then went to one knee in front of Optimus. 

Leading by example, Optimus thought wildly. Oh _Primus_. Ultra Magnus shuttered his optics. And then laid his hands upon Optimus’ upraised arms. 

Optimus’ optics widened at the warmth of the contact, the heat rolling off the Magnus’ body. The Matrix purred to life inside him. Ultra Magnus’ hands moved slowly, fingers limning every seam, every contour. Down his arms, down his sides, tracing arcs up his back and down again, ghosting over his waist, settling for a moment on his hips. Ultra Magnus swayed, head bowing, lips parted, venting softly. 

Oh, Primus, Primus, Optimus was in trouble. 

He could shut down his sensors, lock his interface panel. But stoic endurance hadn’t been the stated point. He was to be responsive, aroused. His spike writhed against its cover as Ultra Magnus stroked his thighs, pushed his knees farther apart. 

With a quiet _snik_ he opened his interface panel, letting his spike extend fully, internally roiling with pressurized transfluid, his valve engorged and moist. He could arch forward, stroke Ultra Magnus’ ventrum and inner thighs with the tip of his spike. They could only touch him with their hands, but nothing had been said of the reverse.

This wasn’t about clever dodges and workarounds. His bindings were symbolic. He must place himself in their hands. In perfect love and perfect trust. Ultra Magnus’ hands moved up his thighs, along the juncture of hip and torso, closer and closer to his interface array. 

“Aa-aahn…” Long, sensitive fingers traced the banded and whorled segments of his spike, slipping in the hot lubricant seeping from the tip and tiny emitters along its length. A sub-vocal shiver ran around the circle of nuns. Ultra Magnus’ optics remained tightly shuttered, but Optimus watched his face. The Magnus trembled, frame painfully taut. He shifted to one side, straddling Optimus’ right leg without touching, though Optimus could feel the heat radiating off Ultra Magnus’ interface panel. One hand moved to draw circles over Optimus’ lower back, the other taking a firmer grip on his spike, stroking up and down, thumb rubbing the tip on the upstroke. Optimus’ hips made an abortive, uncoordinated thrust before he controlled himself, willing his body to stillness as the collective venting in the hall grew louder. He could hear Ultra Magnus’ jaw clench.

“Be one with your body,” Beachcomber hummed. “Be inside and outside. Be the pleasure. Be everything.”

“Don’t help him!” Sunstreaker hissed.

“Nonsense,” said Perceptor. “No one can comprehend a word Beachcomber says unless they already understand what he means.” 

“Magnus,” Optimus whispered, bowing his head close to the other’s but making no attempt to touch, to kiss. The stroking of his spike became faster, harder, almost desperate. Lubricant from his valve dripped along the rim, down the supporting structures of the array. “Mmm…Magnus, remember your…your own rules. You can s-stop before you…” 

Ultra Magnus curled forward, gasping, charge crackling across his armor. Behind his seals, a small amount of lubricant and an immature form of transfluid circulated, recycled into his systems after the storm had passed. Panting, he stood, and backed away, reaching blindly for his hammer, which Prowl gently returned to him. No one spoke. Optimus watched him keenly. Was he recovering from overload or in spiritual pain?

Leaning on the staff of his hammer, Ultra Magnus mustered a smile and gestured for the next mech to take his place. Beachcomber patted his knee as he passed.

A small mech, Beachcomber knelt fully between Optimus’ widely parted legs and wrapped both hands around the thick, jutting spike. Humming to himself, he began to massage it with slow, firm strokes. His voice was deep and resonant, and the vibrations travelled down his arms into his hands. Optimus squirmed. This was a bit unfair. The singing grew louder and the melody wandered as Beachcomber’s back arched, his hands sliding and clutching faster, bringing Optimus dangerously close. Little droplets of lubrication spattered his belly and Beachcomber’s chest. 

Slowing his hands suddenly, Beachcomber leaned forward, glossa extended. Optimus shuttered his optics.

“That’s liminal, Beachcomber,” Ultra Magnus said quietly. “As you are well aware.” Beachcomber chuckled and withdrew the offending appendage, moving his hands again. Several mechs along in the line, Perceptor made a disappointed sound, much to the amusement of those around him. 

“All are one,” Beachcomber hummed, working Optimus’ spike firmly, putting his shoulders into it; deep stimulation Optimus could feel not just in his spike, but moving upward from it through his core like a rising beam of plasma, pure and cleansing. “All are Primus. Primus in you and in me. Touching ourselves, touching each other, touching him is all one.”

All are one. It was an ancient phrase, a cliché. Optimus’ CPU was travelling strange circles in this place. The Matrix thrummed and whirred. He could _feel_ the light of it spreading through his body, smoothing the jagged edges of his arousal, lifting him into a steady state, a high plateau. 

His hips jerked once, twice, three times; but with a long, deep vent, he relaxed, heat pouring off him, his spike slick and hard and pulsing in Beachcomber’s hands. Not a drop of transfluid escaped. He met Beachcomber’s beatific smile with a shaky grin. 

Beachcomber stood, letting his fingertips trail along Optimus’ spike, and backed off the platform. His smile and humming didn’t waver, but there was an obvious sway to his hips that had not been there before. Flickering his visor in lieu of a wink, Beachcomber sauntered from the hall. 

Trembling in sporadic waves, Hound ascended the platform next. Neither of the previous two carriers of the Matrix had gotten as far as this trial, and no one currently in the Order, except Kup, was old enough to remember Galena Prime. Hound was one of those who had pursued his meditation practice always and ever alone, despite the many offers he’d received to assist him in attaining the deeper levels. He’d been afraid, as he was afraid now, that touching someone else, being touched by someone else, would be more than his seals and vows could endure. Optimus’ chest was so broad and strong, the red chromatophores drawing the optic, riveting attention. And then the slender silver ventrum, so fetchingly plated, framed by deep blue faulds. 

This close, there was no avoiding the heat of Optimus’ body, or the gentle but compelling enfolding of his fields. Hound could feel his deep, rhythmic venting; was entranced by the bright depths of Optimus’ optics. The scent of the lubricant dripping now onto the platform between Optimus’ legs seemed to fill Hound’s chemoreceptors, overflowing through every minute space inside him, stroking even the lattices and interstices of his CPU, driving out every thought but the need to touch, to taste, to envelop. He wanted, he wanted…

Hound placed his hands on Optimus’ chest. The heat of his armor! The intoxicating vibration of his engine, the low whirr of coolant pumps and the gusting of oil-fragrant air with each deep ventilation. The armor on Hound’s forearms stood out from his endoform. He moved his hands slowly downward. Each interlocking and flexible plate of armor begged to be limned and explored…and yet…there was, farther down…there was… Hound thought he should shutter his optics, but he couldn’t stop staring. It was simply a part of every mech, and yet Hound had never seen one in the metal before. He wanted to touch it. He was meant to touch it. He didn’t know what would happen inside him if he did. One hand drifted lower, hovering. Fields and streamers of heat rose from the spike itself. Hound shivered, hand moving closer.

Optimus lifted his hips, spike aching to complete the contact.

Hound closed his hand around the spike, feeling it in his whole body like a high volt, low amp shock, growing in power, overwhelming him sense by sense. Optimus moved in his grasp, and the sight of that gleaming spike emerging between his own fingers, slick with lubricant, sent Hound tumbling, shuddering to hands and knees, his face so close to the spike as he tried to rise that he nearly overloaded again. 

Across the hall, a tall but unusually slender mech, whose coloration was an elegant design of black and white in equal measure, gave a low cry and dropped to his knees in spontaneous overload. After a moment, the nuns beside him helped him to his feet. He took a step forward, beseeching the Magnus with his optics. 

“Your choice, Mirage,” Ultra Magnus said kindly. 

With a wavering smile, Mirage bowed and took himself from the hall and the trial. The part of Optimus that could still think such things was glad at least one person would be keeping Skyfire company.

Hound dragged himself off the platform. Bumblebee moved to help him, but Hound waved him away, smiling to remove any sting. It wasn’t that he didn’t want the help; he just didn’t think he could have anyone touch him right now without sending him over the edge. He felt as though he would never be able to touch himself the same way again. Everything he did and thought in meditation now would be colored by the overwhelming proximity of the Matrix-Bearer. He wanted to be alone to savor every nanoklick. 

Optics still trained on Hound’s retreating form in concern, Bumblebee approached slowly, almost stumbling when he at last turned and realized how close he was to Optimus’ body. He put his hands up to steady himself…

“Oooh!” Bumblebee squeaked. He stood there, hands pressed to Optimus’ chest, optics caught and pinioned by Optimus’ heated gaze. The Prime’s fields gusted across his doorwings, charging them like solar wind, that charge going right to his core, and from there down, down to his small, unopened interface array. 

Bumblebee sank to his knees, hands trailing down Optimus’ body. At optic-level now was the gleaming spike, hot and pulsing. Below it, Bee could see Optimus’ valve; just as hot, clenching on air, clear fluid gathering and overflowing, the tiny lights of sensor nodes leading his gaze in, leading deep, like the contemplation maze below. Oh, Primus! Bee wanted to touch, to go in, to follow the lights as they winked and shimmered, the walls of Prime’s valve expanding and contracting in needy reflex. He rubbed at Prime’s thighs, the polished cuisses smooth and alluringly curved under his hands. His doorwings shivered, buzzing with nervous energy. Shuddering, he bowed his head and grasped Optimus’ spike.

“Easy,” Optimus murmured. “Take your ti-mmmMMM!”

Bumblebee loosened his grip somewhat. He began to stroke, swiftly entranced by the way each ridge and whorl caused his fingertips to move up and down with each minute contour. The sensation bloomed through his hands, his wrists, forearms – and down, where all the rest of his energy seemed to be going. His engine hitched, stuttered, and he arched backward, hands clutching as though Optimus’ spike was a grounding rod, as blue licks of static chased across his body.

Optimus moaned with him, hips twitching, but Bee’s climax had been solo.

Frowning, Ratchet approached Optimus as Bumblebee gathered his composure. He tipped Prime’s head back, into the light, calling up an image he’d recorded earlier. Yes. His optics were a shade darker blue. As far as Ratchet was concerned, this trial was over. They’d met their match, met their _mate_. He lifted an orbital ridge at Ultra Magnus.

The Magnus shook his head minutely. They would see this out to the end.

Ratchet sighed. Well, Optimus was holding up just fine. Nothing they could do to him now would do anything but bring their god more fully into his metal. And maybe the Magnus was right. Maybe they all needed this. Let the ritual run its full course, and maybe – maybe – they would all be a little more prepared for what would happen after.

Movement between his hands returned his mind to the subject in question. Optimus nuzzled at Ratchet's fingers, optics glowing softly at him. "Oh you'll get plenty of attention from me later," Ratchet said, grinning. He patted Optimus’ helm and stepped away.

Beams of sunlight from the high windows moved slowly across the floor. Drift's armor blazed white, burned black as he crossed through sunlight into shadow. He lifted his arms as if in embrace, optics dim, fields murmuring low, already halfway into a meditative state. He approached Optimus, but did not quite touch. He bent his body this way and that, fields spreading, meshing with the Prime's, optics entirely extinguished. Within Optimus the Matrix pulsed, casting a beam of radiance outward that had only peripherally to do with sight, striking through Drift's chest and spark to the jewel in the hilt of the sword on his back. Drift felt as though he and Optimus stood alone in some high, dark place with nothing around them for vast distances, but beyond that distance the universe boiled and swarmed with life and energy. And somehow within, a kind of sacred geometry had been made of his spark, the jewel and the Matrix, and the equations solving that geometry were pouring in heavy, hot-liquid gushes from his interface array; spike and valve.

Drift made a small, helpless sound, arched rigid for a moment, then collapsed. Ultra Magnus darted forward and caught him, nodding reassurance at the alarmed look on Optimus' face.

"He's fine," the Magnus said. He cradled the young nun until Drift's systems rebooted.

"Showoff," Blurr and Hot Rod muttered, but their tone was more fond than scathing. Drift made a rude gesture at them out of reflex as Ultra Magnus set him on his pedes, blinking muzzily and rubbing unselfconsciously at his chest and then at his crotch, as though expecting to find there some evidence of what had happened. His hands were warm from charge release, but unslicked. At a nod from the Magnus, he bowed and left the hall, aiming a kick at Hot Rod that the latter dodged with the lazy nonchalance of a single vorn's life experience. 

Blurr appeared on the platform as if teleported. He stalked a staccato circle around the bound Prime, quivering with intense interest, tilting his streamlined head as though contemplating the best line of attack. Optimus was a large mech. There was a lot of territory to consider. Blurr settled – for the moment – behind him, rubbing the core vents on his back coyly before diving for his aft and legs, hands quick and clever, fingers seeking tender access. Optimus knelt up to give him freer range, hips jinking as Blurr reached between his legs, darting a grab at his spike from below. But the proximity was having an effect on Blurr as well. His hands trembled and steadied, trembled and steadied, flicking from seam to node, slick and sliding from Optimus' lubricant, smearing up his arm to the elbow. Those core vents were hot and blowing…

Already, Blurr was getting slag over private comms from Hot Rod. Just because Blurr was always the first one to blow his charge when the three of them meditated together. That didn’t mean he couldn’t take his time if he felt like it. It wasn’t his fault his processors and somatic systems were tuned so fast the outside world seemed to amble by in slow motion. He wasn’t _bad_ at meditation. He wasn’t! He liked getting to the deeps as much as anyone, where it felt like the hand of Primus was moving through your entire body, immense and immanent fingers slipping down between your legs…

That thought was perhaps not helping if his goal was to last longer than Drift had. Here with one hand between Optimus’ shiny smooth legs and the other hand pressed flat to that big wide red back, keeping Blurr from licking that bright hot armor. Blurr rested his crest against that armor – not a kiss! – and reached farther between. Get his hand around that spike at least once, one good stroke before he tipped over if he was going to. And oh he was going to, Primus, he was hot as Optimus was down there already. Not his fault, not his fault; the aching slow drip of lubricant down the underside of the spike, sliding down Blurr’s fingers, across his wrist, down his arm, dripping off the cowter of his elbow and _plink!_ joining the little puddle between the Prime’s spread knees.

Blurr opened his mouth wide, hands clutching at the things he was holding on to; arching and shivering against a back strong and wide enough to shelter them all from the acid rain and willing to shoulder anything else if it was asked. 

He sank to a crouch, balanced on the hard points of his narrow feet, venting heavily; recovering. He steadied himself on the Prime’s shoulder, unshuttering his optics to meet Optimus’ questioning gaze. Blurr smiled. He may not have lasted long, but he’d gotten to feel the hard length of a Prime’s spike pulsing in his hand; poor Drift hadn’t even gotten that far. They’d spend the next decavorn teasing him about it. 

Hot Rod didn’t wait for Blurr to move before striding onto the platform and winding his arms around Optimus’ neck. Blurr shot him a filthy look, morphed it to a knowing grin, and flitted out of the hall.

“I bet my spike’s as big as yours,” Hot Rod whispered, lips pure measures from Optimus’ audial. “When it comes out, I bet it’ll curve upward like yours, all wet and ready.” Ratchet wouldn’t tell anyone what their equipment scanned like. It wasn’t fair. He and Perceptor and maybe Wheeljack and Hoist knew for themselves. But Ratchet and Ultra Magnus and that old gearshift Kup thought it was better for most of them to have that discovery to look forward to if they found the True Bearer, and better to never know and not speculate if they didn’t. “I bet my valve is stellate at the rim; I bet I can take any size mech inside and I’ll be so hot and dripping down my thighs. You’ll want to initiate me first, I bet, take me right on this platform in front of the Magnus and everybody.” He slid his hands lower, wrapped them around Optimus’ hips, his own interface panel sealed and closed and so close to Optimus’ spike they could feel each other’s heat. “But maybe I’ll make you take me last.”

“Mmmmmmmm,” Optimus hummed, optics now the vivid blue of approaching twilight, his mouth not quite touching the cables of Hot Rod’s throat. “However you want it, sweetspark.” 

And oh slag that was really not fair, throwing fields and harmonics like that and Hot Rod bared his denta and partitioned charge desperately and relax, relax, relax, think about something else, not the rooftops and Thundercracker’s engines, something boring, boring, boring like Blurr’s maintenance schedule and does he _have_ to polish himself that often, really? And that wasn’t helping either, so Hot Rod pushed away, stood unbowed to prove he could; venting hard, maybe, but he hadn’t surrendered like the others. He could have gone deeper if he’d wanted to, but Perceptor was next and everyone knew he’d been eager from the first circle cast. 

Hot Rod’s grin at Ultra Magnus had a lot of teeth in it. Shaking, he made way, returning the quick squeeze of hand from Perceptor as they passed.

Everyone – or nearly everyone – assumed Perceptor had planned his actions for this trial down to the last servomotor command eons ago. And he had. But he abandoned everything the moment he had seen what Ratchet saw in Optimus’ optics. He stepped up onto the platform with unseemly, uncaring haste, taking a knee and flinging his arms around Optimus’ torso, tucking his helm beneath the Prime’s chin. It was easy to forget that Perceptor was quite a tall mech, he spent so much time alone, hunched down into his alt mode.

Optimus saw him only as the well-proportioned mech who had stood in the eastern quarter of the circle; mostly black armor decorated here and there with arcane astronomical symbols and glyphs and star signs. Sweetly handsome, younger seeming than he was. Optimus was learning things the moment people touched him. Not stolen data, not mind-knowledge, not memory-core access, not even body-knowledge exactly; but spark-knowledge, maker-knowledge. Some conduit opened, metal to metal. Optimus didn’t question, let his conscious self sink further into whatever this ritual was doing to him. 

Perceptor made no effort to disguise or restrain his own responses. He explored Optimus’ body with scientific diligence that had nothing to do with passionlessness. Every hitch and rev of engine, every little gasp was an effortless revelation, an open invitation. Perceptor’s body moved in its desire to have Optimus’ arms around it. Perceptor’s mouth made no secret of its desire to be kissed. His hands were sure and deft on Optimus’ spike, undaunted by size or shape or complexity or unfamiliarity. Perceptor was _interested_. 

If his mind was barely keeping optics above the surface of the pleasure-oil sea, Optimus’ body was surely full submerged. His hips rolled slow and smooth, his hands tightened and relaxed on the gold cable warm from contact with his body. Charge arousal seemed to course from the stone beneath him, a torrent through his body, through the cable to the chandelier, through stone again. Direct current ground to sky, holding him in incandescent suspension. Perceptor’s little cries and writhing would have been his undoing, had he not already fallen into this state. 

Perceptor at last found his own balance point and fell past it. Gaining his feet on shaky legs, mouth tingling without kisses, he cupped Optimus’ face in his black hands, watching the Prime’s optics turn the color of full twilight. The look in Perceptor’s optics promised things. Soon. He nearly tripped over Wheeljack, stumbling from the platform amid the heated murmurs of the watching nuns. 

Another few nuns had arms wrapped tight around themselves, trying to hang on until their turn. But their long habit of watching, of being watched as they meditated, attaining unusual depths and lengths of arousal and mind-body connection, had both prepared them and left them as though stuck halfway through a transformation. 

Wheeljack wandered onto the platform, removing a trio of small objects (one appeared to be composed of wispy not-quite-matter) from his person and began assembling them. Ultra Magnus sighed and tapped the ferrule of his hammer lightly on the floor.

“Wheeljack. Please.”

The weaponsmaster deflated somewhat and put his nascent device away. “Never hurts to try.” He spread his fingers instead, and extended them into long, searching tentacles. Ultra Magnus rubbed at his optic ridges but forbore any further comment as Optimus rather eagerly lifted the plates of his armor away from his endoform to allow the tentacles to stroke and pet and nibble sensitive places. Optimus’ movements were becoming more and more sinuous, impending and slow, his responses more vocal if not fully verbal. 

“Huh,” Wheeljack murmured. “Interesting. With your armor out of the way like that I can really feel that weird energy signature. That must be the Matrix, right?” Wheeljack lifted his own armor, exposing tender sensors and haptic nodes, to enhance his reception. 

Optimus smiled, rumbling quiet with an odd sort of contentment. As with the others, his optics roved over Wheeljack, appreciating the nun’s compact, sturdy body and curious, radiant spark. And then something jolted him almost entirely back to mundane awareness. 

A wire was wrapped tightly around the middle of Wheeljack’s right upper arm beneath the armor; glowing ruddily, giving off palpable heat once Wheeljack’s armor had lifted. The metal of his endoform was darkened around it. The wire didn’t seem to hamper his movement at all, but surely it was causing him pain. Optimus struggled to form words as Wheeljack’s slender fingerlings dipped into a particularly sensitive hollow between hip and thigh.

“Wheel…jack…what is that?”

“Hm? Oh, the hotwire. _Oh._ ” Wheeljack suddenly retracted his fingers, covering the wire with the opposite hand just for a moment. Not ashamed, but self-conscious, and newly so, an emotion he wasn’t accustomed to. “It’s a…well, see, I kinda get involved in my work. The hotwire’s a reminder. Most of the time it’s just warm, but if I go too long without recharge or fuel then it gets hotter, hot enough for me to notice no matter how deep into my projects I get. That make sense?”

“Could not one of your fellows here simply remind you?”

“We’ve tried that,” Ratchet said drily. “We’ve even gone so far as bodily dragging him from the forge. He says, ‘yes, Ratchet, yes, Perceptor, I’ll go down to the hall and get some energon right now’ and then he goes right back to work. Next thing I know, he’s fallen into emergency shutdown and melted half his face off. It’s a nuisance. We’re not eremites here, but every mech should at least have the sense to take care of his own basic needs.”

Wheeljack waved his hands, shaking his head. “It’s more than that. It’s a reminder that spark and metal are one, for as long as we walk the world. Some of us get too easily convinced of the preeminence of the mind and spark over the metal. It’s all one, it’s all important. Pain reminds us we’re alive.”

Optimus sighed and managed a wan smile. “I have a friend who says nearly the same thing.” 

“Yeah,” Wheeljack said, nodding thoughtfully. “I guess a warrior might at that.” He focused again on Prime, headfins casting a soft pink glow over the white of his helm and spaulders. Optimus’ optics were paler; they’d lost ground and it was Wheeljack’s fault. He extended his fingerlings again and leaned in, stroking under the vivid armor, letting himself heat up again as well, headfins brightening; watching Optimus’ optics darken as Wheeljack’s arousal deepened. That was it. The words of the trial said they were to try to get the supplicant to overload, but that wasn’t the important part now. It wasn’t Optimus they needed to light up, it was themselves. With each overload Optimus would merge farther into his Primus-self. And after the trial was ended, Optimus would initiate them. The light from Wheeljack’s headfins shifted to cerise. The Matrix-Bearer, the Vessel of Primus, would lay his hands on their bodies, kiss them with that kind mouth, touch them in their sacred places with his spike, and envelop them with his valve. (Wheeljack’s venting turned irregular and shallow. The heat and roiling of pent fluids behind his interface array was somehow affecting his gyros.) After that the nuns of the Order would be permitted to touch each other according to their own desires. There were things Wheeljack wanted to ask of, to try with Kup. He leaned his forehelm against Optimus’ hip. Venting deeply, he drew his wandering fingerlings down the Prime’s sides, hips, over the spread thighs. Optimus’ spike rose hot and close, but Wheeljack did not touch it. Not yet. 

Wheeljack scraped his cheek across Optimus’ thigh, sliding his face plate across his mouth, turning his face from the temptation. He wanted to lick that spike, kiss it, suck it into his mouth – that almost more than in his valve. He wanted to taste Optimus’ lubricant and the transfluid no one of them but Kup had yet seen. His fingerlings groped blindly for small recesses to delve, sending their data back to his CPU in a detailed map of Optimus’ body that he knew he would put to good use later. More places Wheeljack would lick and kiss when it was his turn; maybe here on the lubricant-slick platform, maybe just the two of them in his cell. Optimus would fill the room with his exhilarating fields and warmth, and fill Wheeljack with hot transfluid…

Surge and tide, up over his head, and Wheeljack was falling, shuddering, the forge-fire of his spark flaring wild, outer layers exploding to form a nebula around them. When Wheeljack’s optics rebooted, he found Ultra Magnus and Ratchet helping him down, steadying his shaky steps; but he felt a little colder, drawing away from the Prime. He had a set of special rifles to finish, though, didn’t he? That cheered him right up and he grinned, sliding his faceplate aside, as Ratchet ascended the platform.

A lesser mech – or even a not-so-lesser mech, a less-Primus-addled mech, say – would have been disconcerted by the expression of lascivious determination on Ratchet’s face. But Wheeljack’s finger-tentacles had been very nice. Optimus wished they would come back. And his spike felt lonely. Why wasn’t anyone touching it? Oh, there was Ratchet. Ratchet was nice. Maybe Ratchet would touch his spike and make the lonely go away. No one was kissing him, either, which made him a little sad. He liked kissing. A vague memory floated through the haze. The nuns were going to kiss him later, weren’t they? That must be it. He wriggled, happy at the thought. There were a lot of nuns and later they might all kiss him! That would be very, very nice. 

Wait. Ratchet wasn’t touching him. Ratchet was standing there, looking at him. What a funny expression! Optimus didn’t really want to process what the look on Ratchet’s face might mean; he wanted Ratchet to come put his lovely black hands on his spike and wherever else Ratchet might be interested in touching him. He wanted to nibble on Ratchet’s sleek chevron, too, though he thought maybe that would have to be later, like the kissing. He opened his mouth, making little pleading noises and shifting his hips restlessly. Now Ratchet was covering his optics with a hand. 

Dear Primus. Ratchet was torn between falling upon Optimus vows and seals be slagged, and laughing. He fought for a third option, since laughing would probably lead to the first choice anyway, once he got going. Calm. He needed – somehow – to remain calm. With a bound Prime kneeling before him begging for interface. 

Ratchet’s hands, of necessity, were the most sensitive parts of his entire body. A great deal of his CPU and coding were dedicated to their sensory inputs and motor outputs. Every time those hands had made contact with Optimus’ body, it was all Ratchet could do to maintain a jaunty shield of bravado and winking. Now that it was his turn to give pleasure deliberately, he used the backs of his fingers, the sides of his thumbs; reaching for whatever slim dulling of sensation this would grant him. His lips hovered near Optimus’ audials, though he used private comms rather than speak aloud, whispering sweet, soothing nonsense across the thin veil of air between them. 

The scorching air from Optimus’ vents seared past Ratchet’s cheek with every exhalation. Optimus bumped his body against Ratchet’s, rubbing up into every touch of his hands. Ratchet abandoned the soothing nonsense and spoke his mind – as was his wont.

//Primus below, you’re hot. Warframe rebuild or no, someone knew what they were doing when they put you together. I can’t wait to get between your legs. And then, even better, get you between mine.// 

Ratchet knelt, massaging Optimus’ legs, reaching under to rub his aft, skirting the interface array, pressing his cheek to the underside of the Prime’s shaft – so close, so close to forbidden, and the Magnus’ optics on them fierce, he knew, but the slippery, heated boil of contained transfluid vibrated through the gleaming segments against Ratchet’s thin facial plating. Ratchet opened his mouth and groaned, but did not turn his head.

//I want to polish your faulds. From the inside. With my glossa,// 

Optimus’ hips juddered, spike slipping against Ratchet’s cheek, and Ratchet pulled away, getting his hands firm around the spike at last, to keep himself from doing something else. He almost overloaded then, but scrabbled for partitions and control and a handful of other little medical workarounds. 

//Want to strip you armor off, piece by piece. Rub your endoform with microcrystalline selenite oil. Lay you out in the courtyard in the moonslight where the oil will make every ridge and plane of your body glisten. Then pour high-grade on your thighs and ventrum…lick it off in concentric circles…//

The Prime’s optics were deep-twilight blue, but something seemed to shift in his processor, reopening the pathways to language. Perhaps because he somehow knew Ratchet wanted verbal response.

//You have an agile imagination, Mechanica,// he rumbled, thrusting his spike more forcefully in Ratchet’s hands. 

//Wait till you experience the rest of me.// Ratchet shivered as the sonic waves of that deep voice passed over and through him. //Speaking of agile, I noticed that handy little modification you have down there. Very handy. I’d love to see it in action.// He shifted his shoulders, torso coiling, extending, coiling, in rhythm with the movement of his hands. They were fragging, he thought, right out here in the middle of the great-hall; that Ratchet’s seals were intact seemed irrelevant. Their bodies undulated in the ancient sequence, energies spiraling higher and higher toward release. He didn’t want to stop. He didn’t want to step away and let the next nun take his place. He wanted to keep on stroking this big, thick spike, lubricant running over his sensitive hands and down his arms, dripping on his legs and the stone floor. 

He vented hard, reaching for calm, slowing his hands. Not stopping. Words. Concentrate on words, a ploy to draw the ritual out.

//Three pleasure-bots walk into Maccadam’s. After a few cubes they get to comparing valve size. First mech says, “My valve’s so big I can easily take two spikes at a time.” Second mech says, “Oh yeah? Well, my valve’s so big I can take four!’ Third mech sips his energon, thinking. ‘My valve’s so big,’ he finally says, ‘that I can take an Omega.’ The other two don’t believe him, of course, so he spreads his legs…// Ratchet stilled his hands for effect, //…and slides down the barstool.//

Optimus blinked, his rather distracted processor taking a moment to construct the scene. Then he flung his head back and laughed. As he did, Ratchet wrapped both hands around the tip of Optimus’ spike and slid them down, hard, like a thrust into a valve. Optimus groaned amid his laughter, but it was Ratchet who arched and overloaded, shuddering, falling across Optimus’ thighs, optics guttering. 

Three nuns ascended as Ratchet withdrew (stretching his arms and rolling his shoulders in deep satisfaction). They were smaller than Beachcomber, though not by a lot. Optimus noted the wheels in their feet. Ah, two-wheelers. He’d always admired the stunning elegance and intelligence of that frame-type. Fast on all kinds of terrain, fast in transformation; brilliantly fuel-efficient. 

They circled him, arms extended, fingertips brushing him lightly, curiously. They weren’t a branched spark, Optimus found he knew, but these three had forged a bond stronger than molybdenum alloy. 

“Elita, Chromia, Arcee,” they sang their names to him as they circled, their movements a kind of dance. He swayed in their center, responsive and open. They drew closer and closer, movements in concert, their singing beginning as a whisper, gradually growing louder – a tripartite close harmony. They hurdled his legs, flattening their palms over the rim of his valve as they passed between, smearing his lubricant over his armor and themselves and each other. He gasped at the contact with his valve rim, grinding his hips into their palms. He had never heard their song before, but he let his head fall back and opened his mouth and his voice spilled from him in a harmony two decaves lower. 

Arcee, the youngest, squeaked and overloaded, stumbling in the dance, caught by her sisters. Chromia and Elita circled once more, moving slow under the waves of the Prime’s voice before also succumbing to the pleasure flooding their angular frames. 

Prime’s head remained fallen, his voice fading to silence, his body limp in its bonds, optics shuttered. Only the spike remained upright and stiff, shining platinum with its seeping lubricants and the mellowing sunlight. 

Ratchet spoke to Ultra Magnus, then bespoke a handful of nuns over comms. They climbed the platform, supported Optimus’ lolling head, bringing cubes of energon to his lips and encouraging him to drink. The smile he gave them in thanks had become one that many of them had seen in their deepest meditations. The pool of lubricant spread beneath him, flowing over the edge of the platform. The scent made the nuns dizzy and a little wild. 

“All right, Bluestreak,” Ratchet said, gesturing the next nun in line up to take his turn. “He’s fine, but the platform’s slippery, so be careful.”

Bluestreak nodded. He stepped carefully, but nearly slipped anyway as he drew near Optimus, optics riveted by the way the Prime’s head rested against a drawn-up arm, optics half-shuttered, lips parted, venting deep and even, fans running full on. 

Optic ridges knitted, Blue reached out and cradled Optimus’ face. Ratchet said he was all right, but Blue thought he’d be exhausted by now, himself. Not to mention in some discomfort from denied overload. He knew some of the older nuns could hold a certain state of arousal for groons at a time, but Blue hadn’t quite attained that level yet. And Optimus was untrained! Poor Prime!

Of course Blue had seen what was going on. The subtle signs of godself running flush through Optimus’ frame. That’s what was making things possible at all. Blue still worried about Optimus’ inner state, though. Had the Council told young Orion Pax anything before foisting the Matrix upon him? 

“ _Are_ you all right?” Blue whispered, stroking the Prime’s temporal flanges and audials. 

“Mmmm?” 

Bluestreak’s interface cover snapped open. 

With a muffled yelp, Blue banged his knees together and covered himself with one splayed hand. He wasn’t as strictly solitary in his meditation as Hound, but Blue had never shown his very seals to anyone but Ratchet during his initial medical exam upon joining the Order. He squirmed a little, not certain for a moment what to do; one hand cupping Optimus’ audial, the other himself. 

Optimus was looking at him, topaz-dark optics blinking slowly and looking down at the hand covering his crotch. Bluestreak bit his lips. 

There wasn’t time to learn how to touch Optimus in the ways he liked best, but Blue could touch himself the way he did in meditation, show Optimus all his favorite places, let him watch him overload. Blue’s fans kicked into a higher rpm and Optimus’ venting hitched in response. Yes.

Bluestreak petted Optimus’ cheek then took a step back. He knelt, composing himself, venting smooth and slow, arms relaxed at his sides. He shuttered his optics, sinking his CPU through all the layers of day-to-day functioning, into the deep substrata. Slowly, mindfully, he drew his fingers up his thighs, over his hips, tarrying there to draw ellipses and spirals where the plates of armor overlapped. Up his sides, across his lower chest, looping around the breastplates, brushing back and forth over the top edges of chest armor, making little coy forays among the cables of his throat, tipping his chin up to tauten them. His body swayed as inner charge built. 

It didn’t matter that his armor was insensitive to the subtleties of touch; he knew where he was stroking himself, and his hands could feel it, the pleasure coursing through his fingers going right to his spark and CPU and interface array. He liked the smoothness of polished armor, the keenly engineered planes and complex curves, the interesting ways plates fitted against one another, providing protection while allowing movement. 

He spread his legs wider. Normally, he’d have his interface panel shut, but it didn’t seem to want to close at the moment and he didn’t want to force it. His fingers traced wavering lines around the outer rims of spike and valve housings, not quite touching the sensitive circles of metal. He shivered, gasping a little. Felt so good. And in a corner of his mind he was aware of those watching – none more so than the Prime, hot and huge right there in front of him. Experimentally, Blue shifted his hips, forward and back, holding his hands relatively still. It shouldn’t make much difference which of two surfaces were moving, if it was the friction that was desired, or so he thought. But the movement of his hips, unaccustomed as it was, started a cascade of inputs and outputs, building in heat and motion as he jerked his hips in tighter circles, faster, faster, until his hands clenched and he curled tight around himself, shouting, static boiling off his doorwings in great loops and wheels, spinning off little balls of lightning that fizzed and bounced around the hall until they dispersed with a puff of ionized air. 

He straightened with effort, blinking up at the Prime’s face in hopeful post-overload befuddlement. A fresh wave of lubricant spilled from Optimus’ valve, splashing Bluestreak’s thighs. A single droplet struck the outer rim of Blue’s valve housing and Blue overloaded again. 

Watching Bluestreak – age-mate and friend and frame-kin – dear, sweet Blue, Prowl fought to control his own reactions, to relax and wait patiently. He needed time, space to compose himself. Air, outside, he needed to go outside for a while. Feel the wind on his doorwings. 

Jazz caught his brother’s hand. “Where are you going?”

“I’m going to make certain Red Alert is all right,” Prowl said. “He’s still monitoring the shields. Don’t worry, I’ll be back in plenty of time for my turn.”

“Hmph. Don’t be thinking he’ll get past me,” Jazz grumbled. “You’ll miss your chance.” Half the remaining nuns were ahead of them, but Jazz didn’t think any of them would disqualify this Prime if Ratchet hadn’t been able to. 

Prowl smiled fondly at his twin and slipped away.

One by one they came to him, by twos, sometimes threes. Optimus hummed and writhed and moved under their hands in whatever ways their bodies asked of him, guided by the light and thrumming of the Matrix and a growing presence in his mind and spark, suffusing his body with strange particles. The light in the hall turned to gold, then to amber, fiery copper, bright crimson like a strontium flare. They gave him more energon and a light drinking oil to replenish his body’s fluids. 

Jazz leapt to the platform as if it was a fortress he’d already conquered. Optimus’ optics had turned the color of the sky at night with both moons full, but Jazz bared his denta. He didn’t care. This was just a mech. He was strong, no denying, and clever; but strength and guile and cute tricks with lens filters didn’t make him the Vessel. He leaned in, standing on the tips of his pedes, and set the tips of his claws around the circular bases of Optimus’ audials. 

//I remember Sentinel,// Jazz sent over private comm. //I know what you Primes are like. And I promise I will kill you before I let you do to my brother what Sentinel tried to do to me.// They were a branched spark, he and Prowl, but Prowl was the pure one, the worthy one. When they were called upon to defend their sanctuary, Prowl could and did fight with precision and deadly grace. But vorns ago Ultra Magnus had turned over operational command to Prowl during any such incursion, and it had been almost as long since the Magnus had needed to amend or countermand any of Prowl’s orders. Jazz refused to consciously think about what would happen to that finely balanced mind if that slender body was forced against a wall and clumsily fingered in places no one else was supposed to touch them. Sentinel hadn’t gotten past Jazz’s seals, but the attempted violation had been terrible enough. That the Prime had carried an endoform-deep scar away from the Sanctuary (and nothing else) had almost been sufficient compensation. Almost. 

Optimus’ fields wrapped him in compassion. Not pity, but acceptance and unmistakable, unshakable love. The parted armor made the spark signature – and the other energies which accompanied it – devastatingly apparent. 

// **Jazz.** // 

The comm came from Optimus, but that voice…Jazz knew it must be Optimus. Had to be. The alternative…no. No, the mech just knew voice tricks, too. 

// **Jazz. You don’t have to forgive Sentinel. But don’t let what he did continue to cause you harm.** // 

Jazz could hear things inside Optimus shift, deep chambers unlocking. The heavy armor over his chest moved as though restless. Jazz slammed his hands on the main plates, trying to hold them closed. 

// **What do you fear, Jazz, that you would knowingly deny me?** // 

//I’m not…that’s not…// Why was he answering? This was a trick. A cruel game. Optimus had come up here, knowing what their beliefs were. Flashing the Matrix around didn’t prove anything. The plates under his hands parted, and the endoform beneath as well. The facets of the Matrix shone brighter than daylight in the dim hall. Behind it, Optimus’ own spark glowed, a humbler light. But it had been found worthy to companion a piece of Primus’ own core-self. Trick or not, Optimus had made himself mortally vulnerable. Jazz did not have his spear, but he had other weapons, small things, just as deadly. 

And suddenly that thought horrified him. What had he become if he could consider such things? What harm had _Optimus_ done? Ultra Magnus was the first to admit they didn’t have as much information as he liked, but Jazz had gotten the impression the lowly records clerk had been swept into events much larger and faster than he’d been prepared for. The new Prime had doggedly kept on the path he’d found himself on, choosing as best he could. He had tried to overthrow the stifling caste system using nonviolent means. 

The nuns of the Solian Order would much rather continue their lives of contemplation and meditation unmolested, yet they too had found themselves honing their battle skills to unmatched heights simply to maintain their right to exist. 

// **Bright-fierce one. Your spark is the part of me that first sang.** //

There was no defense, no firewall could hold. Jazz lifted his pride as a shield, watched it shatter. The blow did no harm to the arm and the body/mind/spark beneath; blue radiance swirling around him, holding him tender and close. It didn’t matter if he opened his spark chamber or not, the light went right through him, touched him, melded with his soul. 

Oh, Primus!

// **Indeed.** // Electromagnetic harmonics conveyed a liking, a thorough enjoyment of hearing their voices crying out his name in love and pleasure. Jazz’s body writhed, every plate of armor ringing like multi-tonal bells, overload resonating through matter and particle-waves, body and spark. He slid to the floor as the waves continued, overloading again and again as his fellow nuns watched in awe. 

At last, Optimus’ chest put itself back together and Jazz’s peaks and valleys settled into a broad, peaceful plain. 

“You still generatin’ there, lad?”

Jazz routed power to his visor, surprised he remembered how to do so. Kup was kneeling by his head, smirking down at him. 

“You’re in the way,” Kup elaborated. 

Jazz sat up, staring muzzily as Smokescreen came up and took his hand, helping him to his feet. Smokescreen had had his turn already, but he’d stayed to watch; probably had wagers going with Brawn and Powerglide and Windcharger and Tracks. 

“Careful,” Smokescreen murmured, tightening his grip on Jazz’s waist. “It’s…uh, _you’re_ slippery.” Jazz had been lying in the pool of Optimus’ lubricant, after all. Jazz coughed as his fans hitched into high again. He needed to sit down and let the calm coolness of the stone walls center him. Smokescreen went with him, stayed with him as Jazz rebooted his secondary processors. The diversionist was a good mech. He’d been the one who had interrupted Sentinel. And he’d kept the promise Jazz had extracted none too gently, to keep what had happened forever a secret from Prowl. 

So much for that. Had Primus been broadcasting? He’d shovel that slag when he came to it. Where was Prowl, anyway?

Meanwhile, Kup stood in front of the Prime, rubbing his hands together, smiling, fondly remembering Galena. Galena had passed the trial of the Cord, too. The Magnus of that time, Palladia, had felt that one nun at least should retain his seals and vows, even afterward, in order to perpetuate their strictures and guide the next generation. Young and cocky, Kup had volunteered, even though Galena had been so beautiful and kind; very like this Optimus. Kup wasn’t going to leave this hall with his seals intact this time. And he’d show this flock of youngsters a thing or two about groping a Prime. 

Blinking himself back to the present, Kup found himself caught by the gaze of optics the color of the sky at midnight with one moon risen. He touched the sides of Optimus’ face and rested his forehelm against the Prime’s. What story could he tell, what memory could he share with this one now? Everything Kup had done had played out here on the body of Primus. Primus often slept, but was he not, in some way, aware of everything that happened on and inside him? 

Aw, it ain’t up to me to show anything to anyone these days, he thought. This was personal, between him and his ultimate creator. He kept his forehelm where it was and wrapped his arms, sweet and easy, around the Vessel’s neck. //Take my seals this time,// he sent.

// **Mmmmmm…** //

//I’ll have you all up in my bits this time, eh?//

// **Mmmmhmmmmm.** //

//And then I can go happy to the Well of All Sparks.//

The Vessel smiled at him, rumbling a chuckle. // **You’re too stubborn to give up on this life yet. You’ll find things to do. Keep this one alive long enough to end this war, perhaps.** //

//Can he? Are you going to—?//

// **Each of you has to decide for yourselves.** // A pure current of pleasure blazed through Kup’s frame, lifting him onto the tips of his pedes before subsiding.

//Nnghh! Yeah, yeah, sorry. I know better. ZzzhrrrrRRRRR!// Pleasure rose over him again, even and serene but relentless in its steady increase, until Kup tipped over, his long-constrained spike twitching behind its seal. Also in the grips, Optimus writhed too, moaning aloud as Kup slithered down his body, rubbing against his spike the whole way. 

Wheeljack appeared to help Kup down off the platform. The weaponsmaster’s fans whirred loud amid the giggles from the nuns around them, but nothing about Wheeljack’s solicitous hold on the elder mech’s arm and waist contained the slightest tinge of impropriety.

The remaining nuns came to him one by one. Mirage returned to take his turn after all, but lasted no longer than Blurr had. The moons rose and set. Springer, tall and massive as Optimus and Ultra Magnus himself, knelt behind the Prime and embraced him, reaching around to stroke the spike with strong hands; simply that, simply sharing heat and providing companionable friction where it was most wanted. The big triple-changer knew the outcome, felt no need to make a show of his turn. When he overloaded, he rested his head on Optimus’ shoulder for a moment, rumbling in contentment when Optimus rested his own head against Springer’s helm. 

Ratchet chuckled. Slag they were cute. He looked around. Hadn’t Springer been last? Why wasn’t Ultra Magnus calling it? Oh. Prowl had come back in at some point and Ratchet hadn’t noticed. Well. People were paying more attention to something else, weren’t they? Prowl had ascended the platform already, standing before the Prime graceful and poised as he always was. Ratchet felt his coolant pumps and fans kick up a notch or three. This was going to be as hot as Roddy’s little show. For both similar and completely different reasons. Ratchet dug his fingers into his elbows. Recharge was for the weak!

Prowl was stillness. Even the trembling of his doorwings he had subdued with much effort. He pressed his palms together, lips not quite touching his fingers. His optics were gently shuttered. The focused regard of his brother from across the hall was a distraction he set aside. Murmured comms around him upon his return to the hall had hinted that Jazz’s encounter with the Prime had been spectacular, but no one would give him details. Jazz had been…altered…after Sentinel’s unsuccessful visit, vorns ago. Prowl allowed himself to hope Jazz’s spark had been eased in some way now. 

He aligned his mind with the pulses and vibrations of his body. The coursing of fluids and electrons, the spins of his spark and the quantum particles of his CPU and memory, the fluxes of his fields. Matter and energy were one. Time slowed, becoming another axis of his understanding. 

He stood before another living being, another aspect of Primus, body forged of Primus’ body, spark drawn from the Well of Primus’ Spark. Prowl could feel the radiant heat and exquisite fields bowing and flaring around him, limning his shape without optical input. Venting deeply, Prowl took another small step forward, closer, enveloping himself deeper into those fields. He was ready. 

When Prowl looked up, he found himself staring into optics dark as the void, glittering with stars. 

Optimus smiled, and Prowl arched up as though he’d been shot, a blinding stroke of lightning snapping between their chests. Prowl fell forward, catching himself on Optimus’ armor, clinging there as his systems reset. 

“The trial…” Ultra Magnus mastered himself with visible effort. “The trial of the Cord is over. Free the True Matrix-Bearer.”

They lowered him with utmost care, Ratchet inspecting his joints for damage, checking his fuel and fluid levels. As they laid him prone, it became painfully obvious that his spike would not retract. 

“Is he…stuck?” Bumblebee whispered, optics huge. 

“Noooo.” Ratchet patted the scout’s shoulder. Someone was in for quite a ride, though, and soon. Someone, Pit. Prowl was sure as slag keeping close. Looked like he was going to make a bid for the traditional right of place. Ratchet didn’t blame him one bit. And if Optimus gave it to him, Ratchet was definitely going to stay to watch at least that long, despite how badly he wanted fuel and recharge. 

Shaking his head, Optimus sat up and blinked his optics back to their normal color. He was surprised to discover that he had one hand rather firmly wrapped around Prowl’s waist. That didn’t seem proper, but Prowl didn’t appear to mind, so Optimus left it there for the moment. At least until he could get someone to explain what was going on. 

“Easy now,” Ratchet said, rubbing the Prime’s shoulders. “You did fine, Optimus. You passed. Do you need anything? Energon? Oil? Do you want to recharge before…?”

“Ah. No, I…is it night already?” He’d thought his chronometer was glitched, but the high windows were dark and starry. He felt very like he had this morning, refreshed and fully energized. With the difference being that now he was hard-spiked and randy as a spacer-caste on his first leave. Why was there lubricant all over the floor? “Am I to, er, initiate you now? All of you? How does that…?”

“Some will want their seals broken now, in front of everyone,” Smokescreen explained, because Ultra Magnus seemed to be missing all of a sudden, and no one had noticed him leaving. “Some will come to you later by themselves or in groups. And for a few, you’ll need to do some seducing.”

“I won’t take anyone unwilling.”

“Yeeeark! No! No, no, of course not. I guess ‘seducing’ isn’t the best word. What I mean is, some of us are shy. We might want you, but we don’t necessarily know how to let you know that. Or how to go about this interface business. It’s different when you do it with another person, I assume?”

“There’s a certain amount of coordination involved, yes.”

“Heh. Most of us, I think, are going to be eager, though. Once you’ve initiated all of us, then we’ll be free to enjoy each other as well. And some of us have been, um, anxious to do that for a long time.”

//You and Prowl?// Optimus enquired over private comms. He’d noticed the way Smokescreen had been looking at Prowl as the latter recovered from…whatever had just happened to him.

//Mmmm,// Smokescreen admitted readily. //And Jazz. If I can get a good kiss in before he decks me, I think it’ll work!//

//Good luck with that.//

//Thanks, I’ll need it!//

“You have a say in the matter of course,” Prowl said, with more control in his voice than was evidenced by his body. “I was last in the trial, it is merely convenient then for me to be first in the initiation.”

Jazz growled. Slagging Prowl had planned this. He’d arranged to be last on purpose. “’See if Red is all right’ my aft.” 

Prowl cast a completely unrepentant grin over his shoulder at his twin. _Tactician_. What did he expect?


	3. The Great Hall

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With the three Trials successfully passed, the deflowerings begin!

The nuns again filled the hall. This time drawing close around the platform, frames strung with a new kind of tension. Hands sought and clung to hands. There was worry amid the anticipation, Optimus thought. Did they expect him to fling this lovely being to the floor and rut upon him like some organic? Around them, Inferno and Windcharger were scattering absorbent pellets and sweeping them up; clearing the spilled lubricant. 

//Prowl,// Optimus transmitted privately, //I just need to be certain this is what you want. I…I haven’t been with a virgin since I was a virgin myself.// He smiled at the memory, and at the smile Prowl gave him at this small sharing of personal history. //Springarm and I were…well, there was a lot of giggling and fumbling around and it was awkward and embarrassing and funny, but we enjoyed each other once we’d worked out what we were doing.// He took the hands Prowl extended to him and drew the tactician close. //If there’s anything else I ought to know? Any further…strictures? How do you want me to go about this?//

//There are eight levels of virginity, according to our precepts,// Prowl replied. He offered a wrist data-cable, and Optimus accepted the small data packet. //I think it would be well to…to illustrate each one. Everyone will thereby see what the procedure entails and can prepare themselves accordingly. Reading and seeing are…different.//

//Agreed.// Optimus liked the way Prowl’s fields meshed with his. Consent was a bare minimum. Enthusiastic consent was much better! Wrapping both hands around that slim frame, he drew Prowl closer still, peripherally aware of Jazz watching as he bent to kiss the tactician. 

Jazz remained where he was, resting against the wall, Smokescreen kneeling beside him. His emotions tumbled and scrabbled for purchase within his CPU. No single state remained for long enough for him to get a handle on it. He watched, not sure he wanted to.

Prowl glanced at the floor behind him, surprised. Wasn’t Prime going to lay him prone, cover him? Do things to him? Optimus instead knelt as he had in the trial, knees spread out of the way as he embraced Prowl upright. Optimus tilted his head and pressed his lips to Prowl’s mouth. Sensitive facial components lit up, sending heat and electric waves through his nerve-net, wiping out higher thought complexes for a moment. Optimus tipped his head the other way and kissed him again. Prowl’s engine revved. Such a simple thing for such a strong reaction. Prowl unshuttered his optics, surprised to find he had shuttered them, and moved in to try it himself, straight on. Their forehelms clonked together before their lips could meet.

“Ouch,” Optimus whispered, smiling as Prowl reared back, rubbing his chevrons. 

Prowl understood the angling now, though, and pressed on, successfully this time, fascinated by the heat and slide of supple metal on metal. Optimus’ hands moved on his body, stroking, grasping, as their lips moved, also stroking in a way, and grasping in a nibbly sort of way Prowl would not have thought possible without using denta. Suction applied to his lower lip opened Prowl’s mouth and Optimus’ glossa flicked just between the lips, suggesting, requesting. With a gusty vent Prowl opened his mouth wider, accepting the press of lips, and the stroking inside of a hot, slippery glossa, touching internal spaces that had never been so stimulated before. Around them, the nuns whirred and squeaked, touching their own lips but not daring to put fingers inside. Anticipation and arousal flared in fields throughout the hall. 

Optimus’ caresses became firmer, more intimate. Prowl tried to return them, or at least move his hands from where they twitched and clutched at Optimus’ shoulders. He could do little more than shiver as Optimus’ thumbs pressed along transformation seams up and down Prowl’s sides, fingers sliding lightly over Prowl’s aft and the backs of his thighs. Optimus licked Prowl’s denta, petted Prowl’s glossa into action with his own and a twining, thrusting dance began between them. With Optimus’ spike slick and hot against his ventrum, Prowl understood with his body what the strictures had made clear enough to his mind – that valve and mouth, and fingers, glossa and spike were all representations of each other, all connected to their pleasure centers, all ways of expressing the mind-body connection. 

The Vessel’s kisses wandered. Over Prowl’s jaw, across a spaulder, down the arm, lingering on the inside of the elbow and the wrist, to the hand. He licked and kissed the palm, trailing glossa and lips up and down each finger; watching Prowl’s face, his dimming optics as he slipped Prowl’s forefinger inside his mouth, sucking on it, biting very gently. A jolt coursed up his arm and through his chest as the surrounding nuns chanted _”From the East!”_

Knowing full well what he’d done, Optimus was therefore unsurprised when Prowl moved the finger inside his mouth, thrusting slowly in and out. He sucked harder on the digit, enjoying the way Prowl’s hand and other fingers brushed his jaw, getting hotter, and the way Prowl’s head fell back; small, uncontrolled noises escaping his vocalizer. Watching Prowl’s mouth made him want to kiss it again. He let Prowl’s finger slip free, kissing the palm again, wrist, arm, shoulder…this time he nibbled and kissed vulnerable neck cables, venting hot into them. Prowl jerked in his arms, going stiff for a moment.

“Are you all right?” Optimus murmured, retreating slightly.

“Y-yes…yes!”

Optimus smiled. Just checking. He kissed Prowl’s mouth, pleased at the eager opening and flicking glossa exploring his mouth in turn. He kissed Prowl’s audial base, sensitive to any kind of vibrations, then one chevron – delicately, to avoid damaging the sensory receptors usually housed in such structures. Prowl writhed, moaning; proof of that sensitivity. He kissed a line across to the other chevron, and down to the audial.

“Your mouth…” Prowl whispered. 

“Yes,” Optimus said. “I like kissing.” He flattened a hand against Prowl’s body, rubbing up the ventrum to the chest, stroking a circle, rising higher, stroking fingers along the side of Prowl’s neck he wasn’t kissing. 

“The battle mask,” Prowl said, touching Optimus’ face. Many mechs used them, but not all. For Optimus it wasn’t vanity, Prowl saw, it was necessity. Protecting a vulnerable area. A sensitive area. A place Optimus liked being touched in tenderness and care. Optimus kissed him on the mouth as though he couldn’t resist the proximity, then let his wandering hand take the place of his lips. Only the tip of one finger would fit inside Prowl’s mouth, but Prowl opened for it readily, licking at the sensor-rich underside. 

_”From the South!”_ the nuns chanted over the hum of engines and fans and coolant pumps. 

Jazz hissed between his denta. He had at first been afraid not to watch. But the sounds Prowl was making could not – not really – be mistaken for sounds of pain or distress. Prowl was silent when injured, anyway. He was too far from his twin to feel his fields, but it was obvious Prowl wanted this. Had wanted to do this in the hall in front of everyone. Jazz wasn’t sure he wanted to see Prime do this to – with – Prowl. Yet he couldn’t leave. 

All this kissing and licking of hands was nice. Optimus enjoyed it, enjoyed seeing Prowl experience it for the first time, so open and responsive. There were other things, though, that hands and mouths could do. He let his hands wander lower, mouth following. As Bluestreak had known, the armor could feel little but it didn’t matter. Prowl knew where Optimus was heading, and as the big hands stroked his thighs and the sensitive mouth kissed each tessellated plate of his ventrum, Prowl found himself venting harder, doorwings quivering, body arching into the touches. 

Optimus slipped a hand between Prowl’s legs, the width of his forearm forcing them apart as he reached up to cup Prowl’s aft. Prowl let out an odd little chuff of air, hips twitching. Optimus smiled and stroked Prowl’s thighs soothingly with his other hand. He hadn’t touched the interface panel yet but it was reading hot and the clamps were barely holding. In a single, smooth motion, he lifted Prowl off his pedes, bringing his lower body up to Optimus’ face-level – all the better to continue where he’d left off. 

The nuns “ooh-ed” – at the show of strength, Optimus supposed, though Prowl wasn’t a hefty mech. He smiled as he applied his mouth again to Prowl’s lower ventrum, using his free hand to guide Prowl’s left leg up onto Optimus’ shoulder. Prowl hooked his other pede around Optimus’ forearm, spreading his legs wide – and with a pop and hiss, and an audible gasp from Prowl, his interface panel slid aside. 

The temperature in the hall jumped upward like a small yellow sun expanding into a red giant. 

Optimus was stunned. He’d never seen anyone’s seals but his own and Springarm’s. His own had been simple, thin sheets of steel. Springarm’s had been shinier; reflective, polished membranes of pure aluminum. Prowl’s… Optimus did not want to break them. They were too beautiful. 

The upper seal, concealing Prowl’s spike, was iridescent white, laced with symmetrical black loops and whorls of fractal complexity, dotted and highlighted by tiny beads and strands of ruby and gold. An overlay of metallic blue – Primus blue, energon blue – framed the circular edge next to the outer rim. The lower seal, protecting Prowl’s valve, was silver nitrate black, etched with angular, abstract white, also decorated with ruby and gold, and the bright blue overlay. The designs were not simply in the colors, but in a subtle, nigh microscopic texture as well. He traced the blue circles with a fingertip, half-forgetting what he was meant to be doing, half-surprised when Prowl gasped and shivered at his touch. 

//Every time we overload in meditation,// Ratchet explained over private comm, //another element is added to our seals. The self-repair routines are affected, gathering trace metals and laying them down in a unique design.//

Optimus traced the blue rings again. How could he damage them? This was art…sacred art. 

Prowl held on to the hand supporting him and tried not to wriggle. The fingertip circling his seals felt somehow both soothing and shockingly arousing. His engine was already redlining from the situation. He was spread open, intimate parts displayed to view; yet he was surrounded by his fellow nuns, safe in the sanctuary. He did not have to be guarded in his reactions. He did not at this moment bear the responsibility of keeping his companions safe by the wile and ruthlessness of his battle tactics. Jazz was nearby if he…if he needed him, but not hovering. This was a thing between himself alone and the Vessel of Primus. He spread his doorwings and legs wider as the fingers exploring him moved from the outer rim to the central surface, tracing the molecule-thick layers of metals and minerals. 

Moving his hand aside to pet Prowl’s inner thigh and lower ventrum, Optimus had an idea. He could trans-scan the seals. It was the most detailed scan he was equipped to make. He could store a near-exact facsimile in a special domain deep within his memory. Librarian. He couldn’t not try to archive these artworks somehow. He couldn’t. And no matter how dark the days ahead became, he would have something to warm him.

“So beautiful,” he murmured, and ran the scan.

Prowl’s optics widened. His weren’t the only ones. But his were the first to shutter when Optimus replaced fingers with glossa, exploring every tiny gem and texture with a more sensitive appendage. 

Optimus had the vague recollection that heating a seal made it more malleable, made the penetration of it easier. Seals had no sensors themselves, but the inner and outer rims they were attached to were highly enervated. Touching the seals even lightly sent vibrations through the rims, which sent their impulses in turn directly to the pleasure centers. He flicked the very tip of his glossa over the surface of the valve seal, sketching little circles and ellipses, gripping Prowl’s aft more firmly as the tactician’s back arched, shifting his balance. 

He licked harder, sweeping up and down both seals, pressing the breadth of his glossa into them, venting hot from his core. Prowl curled above him, grasping Optimus’ helm, soft, staccato moans escaping from between his denta. Humming in pleasure, Optimus fastened his mouth around the rim of the valve seal, glossa swirling and dancing across the surface, pressing by minute fractions harder and harder, feeling the hot metal bow inward.

And with a tiny, high, sweet _sleeekt!_ , the seal gave way. Prowl shuddered, fields flaring to span the hall. The nuns squirmed, bodies hot and engines revving.

New lubricant trickled clean and clear across Optimus’ glossa. He hummed, licking and sucking at the inner rim, tasting the precious metals of the sundered seal. 

The spike seal was now tented slightly, so Optimus shifted his focus, kissing and licking the convex surface, holding on to Prowl with both hands as Prowl moaned and thrashed, legs gripping Optimus’ arm and shoulder rhythmically. Optimus’ engine revved loudly. He could feel Prowl trying to keep himself stable and relax into the sensations, into the heat and slickness of Optimus’ mouth. Sucking and licking harder on the spike seal, he slipped a single finger within Prowl’s valve.

 _”From the North,”_ the nuns sang, voices growing ragged. 

Only a small amount of lubrication had pooled within his valve – perhaps not all of the emitters had activated yet – but the interior sensor node lights were lit, beckoning. Optimus ran a fingertip around the inner rim, making certain the remnants of the seal lay flat against the inside walls of the valve, where they would be reabsorbed. He remembered there had been little left of his and Springarm’s seals by the next morning, and that had been worn away as they resumed their previous night’s activities. 

Prowl tried not to squirm, tried to accept the sensations without reacting physically. But Optimus pushed the fingertip deeper, brushing newly awakened sensor nodes, and Prowl jerked his hips forward, wanting more, wanting deeper, writhing in the grip of this rushing, surging heat, this fevered roiling of heavy fluids between his legs. There was a sense of impendingness, an inevitability all his vorns of meditation had only mostly prepared him for. The finger inside him moved deeper, rubbing gently, getting him used to the idea and the sensation, commingled as it was with the molten, rising momentum within his spike. The finger swirled, pressing at the rippling walls of his valve – and his spike pressurized through its seal directly into Optimus’ mouth. 

“From Above!” the nuns cried, static-laced. 

Optimus happily took it all in, sucking firmly, swirling his glossa to collect the first, sweet emission of lubricant, finger working steadily in and out of Prowl’s valve. Both extended and enveloping, Prowl shouted helplessly into overload, hips juddering, hands clutching at the armor of Optimus’ back. Optimus let the spray of transfluid surround Prowl’s spike inside his mouth, swishing the heavy fluid around but maintaining suction, claiming every drop even as he withdrew. He lowered Prowl gently to his lap, petting the tactician’s lax body, stroking limbs and doorwings and helm. Prowl lay upon Optimus’ ventrum, venting heavily, helm resting on the Prime’s chest. The thrum of engine and spark beneath his cheek, and the ancient energies of the Matrix soothed him. 

“You’ll find you can repressurize your spike when you want,” Ratchet murmured to Prowl, scanning him lightly more out of reflex than in fear that he might be damaged or uncomfortable. Jazz’s over-protectiveness regarding Prowl was contagious. Ratchet grimaced inwardly at himself. 

“Yes,” Optimus agreed. His own spike was still hard, pressed between their bodies. The motion of Prowl’s venting alone was rather pleasant. There was still much to do. He leaned back, spreading his knees a little wider, stroking Prowl more firmly. Prowl bumped up under his hands, responsive and eager, his spike lengthening and hardening, gleaming wet and silver, stroking a line of lubricant over the plates of Optimus’ lower ventrum as it rose to lie alongside Optimus’ much larger spike. The proximity was dizzying. 

Prowl reached down between them, between Optimus’ legs, to the hot, saturated valve. Optics never leaving Optimus’ optics, Prowl slid two fingers inside. 

“From the West!” The nuns with a good viewing angle shared optical feeds with the rest. With Prowl straddling the Prime’s lap, and the Prime’s legs spread so, those directly behind Prowl could see clearly the subtler motions going on upon the platform. 

Lubricant dripped around Prowl’s fingers, hot and slick, and Prowl gasped, surprised when the walls of Optimus’ valve _moved_ ; clenching around his fingers, stroking them in a strange, rhythmic evocation. Almost pleading, drawing them in farther. Prime was so much larger. Prowl wondered if… He slipped two more fingers inside, moving reluctantly away from the heat of Optimus’ body in order to watch as the inner and outer rims of the valve expanded to accommodate him. Twisting his arm slowly, Prowl inserted his entire hand. 

Prime moaned, a ripple passing through his entire body, head falling back, hips rolling, valve undulating around Prowl’s hand enticingly. The sound and motion and the scent of the gush of lubricant from them both sizzled through Prowl’s circuits. His spike ached to be buried, but he wanted to make the most of what he was already positioned to do. He spread his fingers, feeling the heavy, pliant walls give even as they pulsed back, clamping down on his hand. Prowl braced his other hand on Optimus’ hip, shivering and venting hard again. The valve was the active part, he realized. Several things in their sacred texts made sense now. The valve drew forth, embraced, and once it had enveloped a spike or other appendage, it danced a symphony of scent and motion, powerful and overwhelming. He struggled to respond with more than uncoordinated twitches, to open and close his hand, to stroke that dynamic interior in return even as the motion of Optimus’ hips tugged at his arm, encouraging him to thrust deeper. 

Ratchet leaned heavily on Springer, biting his lips. Both of them had interface panels wide open, fluids churning behind their seals. Ratchet wasn’t sure his spike would stay behind its seal, even knowing it usually took a goodly bit of valve stimulation to make it emerge the first time – as Optimus had so adeptly demonstrated. 

Prowl worked his hand inside the Prime, twisting, thrusting, swirling his fingertips over the bright, smooth nodes he had rapidly learned to distinguish from the rippled inner surface. Optimus was braced on his elbows, writhing, his spike waving unattended in the air. That needed mending. Prowl leaned down, moaning, mouth open, and took the tip in, lubricant and metal hot against his lips and glossa, pressing farther in an extended kiss, sucking gently at first, shivering as his glossa found the opening where the transfluid would emerge. The taste was different there, volatile chemical precursors rising up from the tanks, or lingering traces of previous emissions haunting the ridges and whorls of metal. 

“From Below!”

Smokescreen had collapsed at the base of the wall beside Jazz, interface panel open, array steaming. Jazz found his hand moving up Smokescreen’s thigh. It took an act of will to stop himself, clenching his fingers around Smokescreen’s cuisse instead.

Prowl could not take the entire length into his mouth, instead kissing and licking up and down the shaft, keeping steady rhythm with his hand inside Optimus’ valve. He returned again and again to the spike’s tip, sucking with greater and greater energy, thirsty for the merest taste of the fluids kept in check within. 

Charge built and flowed in waves across their armor. Optimus sat up to watch Prowl overload again, the white and black nun beautiful and graceful even in ecstasy, the small amount of Prowl’s slowly maturing transfluid pattering hot onto the stone of the platform between their legs. As Prowl swayed, Optimus helped him position himself, drawing the tactician’s quickly repressurizing spike down to stroke the rim of Prime’s valve. Prowl shuddered at the contact, knowing their difference in size was of no importance. What he had felt around his hand he would now feel around his spike. Optimus exerted slight pressure on Prowl’s hips, pulling him closer. Spike tip rested against the wet inner rim. Poised on this brink, Prowl nearly overloaded again. Venting feverishly, he grasped Optimus’ hips, trembling as Optimus’ hands began to stroke him, trailing incoherent desire, finding every small, incandescent vulnerable spot while heat and barely-contained fluid surged within Prowl’s groin, inner tanks refilling rapidly with silvery slickness. 

“From Within!” the nuns shouted, as Prowl sheathed himself, falling as much as thrusting into Optimus. The valve walls clamped down on him, grasping, massaging, rippling in wave after wave. Rim chiming on rim, Prowl shoved his hips against Optimus’ as though they might somehow overlap, coexist in the same space, become truly one. He was hazily aware that Optimus watched him, denta bared, optics flickering now and then with stars as the valve pulled and writhed around him, clasping and releasing to draw out their pleasure, milking his spike, demanding its liquid tribute. 

His body obeyed. The surge dragged him under, enraptured and molten, as though some part of his spark had become liquid and now coursed through his lines into the Vessel, into the heat and light at the core of the planet. 

Prowl was barely online, body limp, spike nestled quiescent in its housing, optics dim. Optimus kissed his helm and stroked his back with both hands, long and lingering, dipping only lightly into the doorwings’ attachments. Deliberate, intent, he curled his fingers around the undersides of Prowl’s thighs, spreading his legs wide, holding him open above the tip of his gently waving spike. Prowl opened his mouth against Optimus’ chest armor, but could do little more than squirm in a languorous way, valve dripping.

//Please,// he private-commed. //Please…O Primus…fill me…//

Starry-opticked, Optimus rumbled low in his chest. Drawing in air, exhaling plasma as though the first forge glowed within him, he lowered Prowl by measures with each vent, until the engorged tip of his spike rested against the inner rim of Prowl’s valve. Lubricant slid down his length, an entreaty Prowl could muster no voice to give. Optimus felt the walls of Prowl’s valve pucker and clench, trying to reach and encompass him, lubricant dripping faster as Prowl shivered in his hands. Primus, once roused, was a merciful being. His spike, long denied, slid into its rightful home.

Prowl arched, a high, clear tone winging from his throat as he was filled and filled, valve walls unspiraling, expanding, internal mechanisms shifting to make room, in and in until the entire length was welcomed and the girth snugly surrounded. Node resting against node, the small lights within glowed hot and bright. Prowl could see nothing but the fierce stars in the Vessel’s optics. 

The nuns spoke a final word, an arcane glyph that seemed to hover and ring through the air as the last facet of Prowl’s virginity was set aside. The Vessel thrummed in harmony, a primal chord awakening. 

Prowl was lifted, the spike withdrawing slow as it had entered, ridge by ridge, node by node. Only the tip remained inside, pulsing in counterpoise to the ripples of Prowl’s valve. Worlds spun, gravity won, Prowl flailed weakly against the Vessel’s chest. Blinking, Optimus came to himself, and finding himself on a precipice, jolted his hips upward, dizzy and uncoordinated for a moment. Prowl didn’t know yet how to make his valve do anything more complicated than clench desperately, but they could make do with simple friction. 

At last, at last! Moaning, Optimus let his head fall back, let his hips fall into a steady, rolling rhythm, knowing even at this pace he couldn’t last much longer. Glad of it. His poor spike! Prowl…oh, Prowl felt so good; so hot and tight, clinging to him, saturated with desire, so beautiful. He curled around the tactician, thrusting harder, faster, their venting synchronizing. His transfluid tanks ached, distended and boiling – he was beginning to seep, liquids mingling deep in Prowl’s valve with each thrust. Optimus bit his lips, on the edge, but feeling he ought to give warning.

“Prowl…aahh…ahhh…after all this, the trial…I’mmm…there’s going to be…a lot of transfluid…”

//Unnnn-understood…//

Optimus wrapped his arms around Prowl, holding on tight as the pressure mounted. He felt as though the rising charge was lifting him from the platform. His thrusting grew wild, short sharp trembling jerks slipping in the froth of their lubricants. 

The charge grounded, Optimus opened his mouth and the pure, sonic roar of the sun, singing fusion from core to photosphere echoed through the hall. 

Prowl hung on to consciousness by bare strings. It was his body, _him_ , that was wringing this sound, this profound joy from the True Bearer. A waterfall, a flume of glowing silver-blue gushed from their joining, spraying and spattering their legs and ventrums and Optimus’ hands and arms, and the platform; odd angles of armor sending streams of droplets arcing outward to patter over the armor of any who stood close, the heat of it causing those thus touched to hiss and shiver. The flood continued moment after moment, thrust after thrust, Optimus sighing and moaning with release, surrendering, hips juddering and slowing. Prowl rocked with him, arms wrapped around Optimus’ waist, optics off. 

“Galena sprayed the ceiling when she finally went,” Kup murmured to Windcharger beside him, nodding in approval. “You can still scan traces up there if you check real close.”

Ratchet, forbearing to comment, licked droplets off his forearm. The taste and scent sizzled across his glossa, through his CPU. This wasn’t normal transfluid, not shimmering silver as Prowl’s was. The blue cast and glow were strange. The transfluid and energon lines shouldn’t be, couldn’t be communicating. But were they? What had Primus done to his Vessel? Ratchet scanned.

No. It wasn’t energon, not exactly. There were chemical similarities, but the Vessel wasn’t leaking something he shouldn’t. Perhaps in fully inhabiting Optimus’ body, Primus had indeed done something strange, but it wasn’t harmful. The taste was intoxicating. Ratchet wanted more. He would be getting it, too, when his turn came. Ratchet sighed. He needed to recharge and refuel. The initiations were going to take some time and Ratchet had been early in the trial. He had plenty of time. He nodded meaningfully at Perceptor. Perceptor had caught several hours of recharge after his turn during the trial, and acknowledged the implicit directive to take over Ratchet’s monitoring (little as it was needed). Ratchet headed for his cell and what he devoutly hoped was his last stint in a solitary berth. 

The nuns cheeped and whimpered, holding each other upright if they could, and the hall filled with the roar of fans and vents on high. Quite a few had overloaded. Including Jazz. 

Their frames pinging and cooling, Prowl and Optimus held each other, swaying with the lingering momentum of their passion. Prowl at last stood, leaning on Optimus’ arm until his legs stopped shaking. Optimus watched him with such concern Prowl wanted to kiss him yet again. He found he hadn’t had near enough of Prime’s kissing. Later. They would have opportunities later. Even if Prowl had to craft them himself. 

For now it was Springer’s turn. Prowl squeezed the big triplechanger’s hand as they passed, and Springer dipped his gallant head, wanting very much to kiss Prowl, too. But Springer’s seals were still intact – the spike seal barely so. Another thing for later. 

As he withdrew from the platform, Prowl made no move to wipe at the transfluid slicking his body. The gathered nuns swiftly chose it as a mark of their initiation; though Perceptor reminded them all in broadcast transmission that transfluid evaporated completely within an orn outside the body.

“Normal transfluid, maybe,” Kup huffed. Perceptor’s face fell.

“Oh dear. Kup, I had no intention of refuting your recollection of Galena Prime.” 

Kup shuffled his pedes and made a patting motion with one hand. “Ah, never mind. She really did hit the ceiling, though. Quite a sight.”

Springer looked at the ceiling. Then he looked calculatingly at Optimus, who was rising to his pedes – not exhausted, clearly, but already revving up for more. A slow grin spread over Springer’s face. 

No point in being shy, Springer reckoned, striding right up to the Vessel. He’d had his hands on the mech’s spike already, after all. He didn’t want the extended, elaborate folderol that had so pleased Prowl. Springer was already plenty wound up. He wanted his seals _off_. He slipped his arms around Optimus’ waist, walking into a close embrace, bodies in contact from pedes to chests. Optimus cupped Springer’s face and Springer tightened his hold. Yes! This was what he wanted. Hot bodies and closeness and a simple joining…

…And then Optimus was kissing him. Heat and charge flared in his face, in his mouth and valve, in his hands and chest, clamored in his spike – the last nearly free of its binding. Optimus’ fingers made only the barest little circles where they rested on Springer’s face and helm. The Prime’s glossa stroked his unaccustomed mouth gently, yet suggested such hunger. They vented hot into each other’s mouths. 

Optimus withdrew minutely, leaving Springer gasping.

“A moment, please?” At Springer’s nod, Optimus knelt, sliding his hands from Springer’s helm to his thighs, making no effort to conceal the focus of his transscan. Springer’s spike and valve seals were a panoply of greens and golds, laced with silver, ringed as Prowl’s had been with bright blue. Green was a rare color on Cybertron; rare and remarkable. Green as sunlight through chrysoprase and peridot; gems imported from off-planet, as their formation required water and weathering, or volcanic activity which did not occur on Cybertron. Optimus had only seen holos of such things. He completed his scan and kissed the seals reverently. Springer swayed, groaning, but tugged on the Prime’s hands, drawing him up again face to face.

He was trying to formulate the words “spike me” but even as he wrapped one leg around the Prime’s thigh, Optimus was kissing and nibbling on his neck cables, hands wandering teasingly around his rotor housing. The next thing Springer knew they were on the floor. As a rotary, Springer always knew where he was in midair, yet he couldn’t be certain how they’d ended up down there, with himself half-reclining and Optimus’ mouth venturing lower and lower. 

For the rest of his life, Springer would remember the sight and feel of the Vessel of Primus pressing his thighs apart, settling between them with a delighted purr. Lowering his vivid blue helm to lick and kiss his seals. Springer’s spike pushed through its cover. 

Optimus’ mouth immediately engulfed it, glossa swirling. Springer moaned and spread his legs wider, pushing up and finding thus that fingers were in his valve _oh Primus yes!_ and Optimus hummed around him, applying suction and Springer felt as though his spike was as big as an omega in rocket mode, hot and pulsing, expanding under the lash of that slick glossa, fluids seeping, spurting, gushing from him in waves. 

He lay half on his side, optics off, venting heavily. He felt Optimus move over him, light touches here and there on his body to remind him where all his parts were. Turning his head, he found a mouth there eager to greet his, tasting of…tasting of his own fluids he realized. Hands grasped him and he and the body he was pressed to rolled, so that he was draped across a powerful chest, narrowing ventrum, and flexible hips gimbaled to legs that wrapped around his. There was a whirr in Optimus’ interface array; a slight vibration, movement, a click, surprised murmurs from the other nuns which barely registered but made sense later; and then Optimus’ spike slid into Springer’s valve. Springer’s spike repressurized…directly into Optimus’ valve. 

Optimus had…rearranged himself somehow. Springer didn’t have the processing cycles to analyze this idea. Heat and slick-strange pleasure whirled within him, around him, enshrouding his entire body, muffling his rotors and all his outward-directed senses. He fell through atmospheres, through gas giants, tumbling, forces wrenching at him, yet this bending felt good. A piezoelectric, tensile thrill of charge stirring out of void and potential. A torus, a fusion reactor’s containment field, was formed between himself and Optimus. Optimus in him, him in Optimus, a surging, pulsing circle. 

Hands shifted lightly on his hips. “In your own time,” Optimus whispered, lips brushing Springer’s audial. “When you are ready.” Springer became aware of soft giggling in the corners of the hall. He realized he hadn’t moved for some time, lying paralyzed atop the Prime, hands braced on the stone to either side of Optimus’ head. He reset his optics, remembering how to see. 

“Ggggggh,” Springer said. Right. There was something he was supposed to be doing. Moving. Optimus smiled, and kissed him.

There were advantages to being of a height. They could easily kiss even while their interface equipment was fully engaged, and look into each other’s optics. Optimus/Primus gazed into him, galaxies whirling across his lenses as he drew his hands slowly up Springer’s sides, working them beneath Springer’s hands, interlacing their fingers, holding on tight. 

Moving. Springer lifted his hips, slow and unsteady, every actuation half-shorted by blinding surges of pleasure, node against node, in and out. Withdrawing wasn’t even what he wanted. But he couldn’t push in without pulling out first. Aching balance, punctuated equilibrium. He lowered himself into and onto Optimus again. “Oh Primus…”

“Yes,” said that voice. Yes, said those optics. The valve caressed him, the spike stroked up into him. Springer forgot how to see again. His body moved on its own, venting in synch with his thrusts, moans growing louder as the charge built. Their lubricants splashed wet sounds across the hall, the circle contracted, flared white-hot and Springer shuddered, lightning-clad, spraying his transfluid down into the Vessel’s hot well, lifted by the force of the fountaining into his own, silver-blue spraying his thighs, marking him. 

Twitching and shivering, Springer fell across Optimus’ body, lax and steaming, engines idling softly as they cooled. Optimus stroked his helm, optics simply blue, smile simply mortal and kind. The nuns whirred and hummed around them, sighing. 

Some little while passed, light moving across the floor with the moons. Springer stirred and lifted himself, staring down at the Prime. Their scans and fields touched, overlapped, both asking _Are you all right?_ and getting amused affirmatives in answer. Springer levered himself to a crouch and offered Optimus a hand up, but there was a stirring, and Optimus focused on the source via the simple expedient of tipping his helm all the way back. His view was thus upside-down but that was fine. 

Red Alert stood at the hall’s entrance. 

Prowl, upon recovering, had gone to relieve Red at the shield monitors. The nuns cooed and warbled happily, beckoning to him and making way. By right of position, it would now be Grapple’s turn to be initiated by the Vessel, but Grapple extended a hand, smiling and nodding for Red Alert to come up instead. 

The mech approached silently. Black armored, except for odd blocks of white that broke up his silhouette, made it hard to judge his frame-type. Red circled the Vessel once, twice. Slow, intent, scanning deeply. Lying sprawled on the platform, Optimus had the distinct feeling of being stalked.

Optimus started to sit up. Sharp and swift, light gleaming from his edges, Red Alert leapt astride the Prime, pushing his chest down with his left hand, placing his right flat in the Prime’s palm. 

“I have been watching you, Optimus Prime,” Red Alert whispered, his lips brushing the portside audial. A data cable sleeked from his wrist unobtrusively to the port in Optimus’. Their fingers intertwined. Upon accepting the link, the first packet Red Alert sent was a quantum cipher that he had constructed to be shared solely with the Prime.

Optimus blinked. He accepted the cipher. Now around them expanded a limitless plain that only they two could reach. With his free hand, Optimus stroked Red’s lean body. 

//My first name was Endline,// Red sent across the plain, holding on fiercely as Optimus shook his head. //I do not have to tell you this, I know that. Please listen.// Optimus stilled. The Prime nodded gravely, accepting, optics darkening. //My first name was Endline. I was programmed as warrior-caste for the Senate. I was an assassin.// He was shaking, fighting the memories but also because he was exposed, in the open. He had been programmed to find pleasurable a certain level of fear. //Oh, Primus, I’ve killed so many, so many…for nothing but political expediency…//

Primus filled the link-plain and hushed him with kisses. // **I know which sparks your hands have sent back to me. I know the vows you have spoken to yourself in the dark.** // Red was drawn closer; hands stroked his legs, spread them. His interface panel slid silently aside, fingertips circled the rim of his valve seal, pressed gently. He shuddered, engine redlining. Primus hummed, pleased. // **My Vessel knows. He will do all he can to help you in the keeping of those vows.** // 

That voice. Red had heard it before. It was a confirmation of their tenets, of the validity of their meditative practices. //Is he not here to enlist our aid in his battles?//

//I am,// Optimus said. //But I would rather you act as instructors. I would keep the Order out of direct combat if possible. I must discuss this with Ultra Magnus.// He cupped his free hand around Red Alert’s aft. //Later…//

Red obligingly withdrew the hardline and link. He had confessed his crimes. He spread his legs further, tilting his hips to best display his seals for the transscan. Ruby scales edged with moonstone radiated outward from each center, orderly and symmetrical. Brushed titanium traceries gleamed silkily in spirals over the crimson and white background. There were no blue rings, however. Optimus paused before engaging the scan. Were the blue rings simply a variation shared by Prowl and Springer, or did they signify something else?

Optimus stroked Red’s aft and pulled him closer, closer. He extended his glossa, tracing the rims first of the valve seal then the spike, tasting the metals and mineral layers and subtle textures now growing hot. Red shivered, unsure why the scan had not been done, but transfixed by the slick glossa. Prime licked in circles, then broad, firm strokes, alternating until he determined that Red seemed to like the firm strokes better. He set to with a will, licking and sucking on the seals, his hands petting Red’s hips and thighs, feeling the heat and charge build and build until Red’s back arched sharply and the sensory horns on his helm sent sparks arcing across the platform.

Prime held his glossa flat against the seals. He shuttered his optics. There. If he concentrated, he could _feel…taste_ a bright layer of blue alloy seep into place. Unshuttering his optics, he found the sensation had been no fantasy. The blue rings signified an overload in the presence of or by the hand…er, appendage…of the Vessel. Humming with satisfaction, Optimus transscanned the seals. Now Red’s seals would not stand out unadorned among his fellow nuns’. 

Venting rather raggedly, Red smiled. “I wondered about that myself.” 

“Mmhmmm. Lovely,” Optimus hummed and applied himself to Red’s seals again. He licked and sucked and mouthed them as if he had waited vorns to do this, and was determined to continue for vorns more. His glossa flicked with quick little motions but alternated from spike seal to valve seal unhurriedly, lingering in the small clenchings of Red’s hidden valve and slow, increasing press of Red’s engorged but contained spike. Red moaned, writhing into the incredible heat in the metal between his legs. His hip gimbals trembled with the longing to spread himself wider, press himself into that devouring mouth, twitching now and then as Optimus’ fingertips drew a low vibrational hum from the metal of his thighs. Red arched up, mouth open in a low cry as Optimus’ glossa slipped through the seal and inside his valve, sleeking the remnant of the seal, tasting his metal, his fluids. Glistening with lubricant, Red’s spike slipped free of its seal. Optimus lapped at it hungrily, savoring every segment and ridge, and every drop of fluid. 

//I neither require nor deserve this tenderness from you,// Red whispered. He caressed Optimus’ helm. //Not yet.// Leaning forward, in a stunning act of will, he slid his body away from that mouth and glossa, undulating down Optimus’ chest, granting the Prime a brief kiss along the way. The traditional method of breaking valve seals was via the abrupt penetration of a spike. Red Alert had lived many vorns in the world. He had seen many things before joining the Order. He straddled the Vessel’s hips, newly opened valve dripping, newly extended spike throbbing. 

Looking down, Red was nearly undone. Optimus’ valve rippled, the sensor lights enticing his body and gaze. Red’s spike surged as though it was a separate entity and wished to join with the Prime under its own power. He hovered on the brink, trembling. The heat from within Prime’s body rose up around him, meshed with the desire permeating their fields. Mastering himself with great effort, Red lowered himself slowly, sinking into that heat and connection. Ancient code surfaced in his CPU, telling his body how to move, even as his mind struggled to remain firmly in control above the tide of unfamiliar and overwhelming sensation. 

The Vessel hummed and moved beneath him, hands roving everywhere, valve caressing and kneading his spike with every thrust. Now Red understood the expressions that had so transfixed Prowl and Springer’s faces. He had not thought the Prime would lie passive, but the raw physical input contrasted keenly with his experiences in meditation. Sometimes he would lie spread on his cell floor, face down, interface panel retracted, and rub his seals in slow circles against the stone; against the body of Primus. But this… This threatened to reorder his world. How would he be able to control his desire after this? Even now he couldn’t keep his hips from rocking faster and faster, seeking to bury his spike in aching friction, and welcoming that dangerous rising charge. Plasma bloomed from his sensory horns, spinning and bursting in vivid colors through the air as he overloaded and spilled his first small measure of transfluid into the Vessel. 

Dizzy, Red levered himself upright, touching his own mouth. Prime lifted him gently, shifted him, lowered him – valve wet and pulsing – onto his spike. As Prowl had, Red could feel his valve unspiral and expand, could feel his body make passage as the Vessel’s spike filled and filled him. Oh, Primus, that filling, that completion, connection, every sensor node caroling blinding pleasure as that spike pushed in and in until it was fully enveloped. Red splayed his black hands across his own white ventrum, pressing against the armor where he could feel the steel-hard length within. Prime’s hands folded warmly over his for a moment before shifting to Red’s hips, and then Red felt himself lifted again, rising until only the tip of Prime’s spike remained, his valve closing in on itself behind the withdrawal as though pursuing its rightful prey. It only vaguely occurred to him that he ought to support his own weight with his legs, as awkward as that would be with them spread so wide. Before he could make the attempt, Prime’s hips were moving.

Slowly, inexorably, he was filled again from below. He couldn’t believe how much he wanted that astonishing stretching, every node exposed and quivering, the impulses additive, no, logarithmic. Lubricant gushed from him; around Prime’s spike as it withdrew, adding to the pressure as it pushed upward yet again. Red’s spike sprang erect, lubricant beading on its tip, along its length. Ridge by ridge, segment by segment, Prime’s hips rose and fell in purposeful care, and his spike itself moved, stroking the full length of Red’s valve in deep, lazy circles – and Red thought at any moment he might explode. No mere metal could contain this feeling. 

Optimus moaned. His rhythm remained steady only for a few more thrusts. Faster, he needed faster. He watched in fascination as his spike disappeared into and emerged from Red’s hot little valve, both of them gleaming wet and swollen, engines roaring. Prime arched his back and overloaded, lifting Red halfway to standing, glowing blue transfluid spraying between their legs.

A deep rumble sounded through the stone of the hall, more felt than heard, as though Primus himself was overloading far, far below. 

Prime retracted his spike, the transfluid that had kept it pressurized flowing out to add to the flood on the platform, and down into his own valve as his spike tucked itself into its compartment. Venting hard, Red shivered on Prime’s lap, faceplates hot, optics fevered and beseeching. 

//I want… May I please?// Red’s spike arched upward in longing. 

//By all means,// Optimus purred, and shifted his hips, spreading his thighs. //For me, the stimulation of spike and valve is so different it is difficult to compare them or to state a clear preference. You may find yourself feeling differently.// Red offered himself and Optimus lifted his hips, catching Red’s spike, enveloping it with his valve, drawing him down and in. Red shuddered. 

Again Red sought to moderate his thrusting, to instead move his spike in that intoxicating, languorous way that Prime had. He gasped as his spike responded – only twitching at first, but the pathways were there. Soon he churned deep spirals, thrashing inside the hot, wet, pliant walls, grinding with his hips, fire and charge building throughout his body. He thought he kept his cries behind his denta, but later he would watch the recordings and find to his acute embarrassment that he had screamed aloud the ancient names of Primus – Firstlight, Dawnmaker, O Beloved Below, the Dearworthy Spark – as he had climaxed, filling the Vessel with silver, marked by the True Bearer’s blue-silver, spraying from that thick spike across Red’s ventrum and chest as Prime joined him in overload. The god-altered transfluid dripped down Red’s body, leaving delicate runnels of light on his armor, on his thighs. 

He collapsed on Optimus’ ventrum, a tremor running through him now and then as the Prime’s valve absently caressed his still-buried but depressurized spike. Optimus petted his back and sides and helm, fields encouraging and calming. Red at last sat up, rebooting his optics and retracting his spike. He closed his interface panel. Fully in control of his limbs at last, he bowed to drop a kiss on the tip of Optimus’ spike, then withdrew from the platform. 

The nuns sighed and cooed, hands reaching out to brush his shoulders as he headed for the door to retake his habitual post at the monitors. The predawn light glowing softly beyond was suddenly blocked. A huge frame filled the opening, white armor reflecting the soft blue of the sky. 

Skyfire huddled within the doorframe, as though afraid of the spaces behind and before him. It wasn’t the space at first, but the unshielded fields, that dizzied his processor. He could feel them with his entire body, glowing along his wing-edges like ionization, seeping past his armor, making his endoform restless. Three strides fuelled by desire and yearning and concern and compulsion propelled him into the hall, where he stopped just as abruptly, aghast and embarrassed. His body made an abortive, grinding motion, as though he was about to bolt. 

“Grapple, you and Hoist shouldn’t have to wait,” Sunstreaker hissed. “It’s your turn; Skyfire can wait like the rest of us. _Tell_ him.”

“What? No, are you mad?” Grapple gave his apprentice a mischievous smile – an expression so out of place on the normally serious architect’s face that Sunstreaker actually took a step backward. “I want to see this unbefuddled, thank you. I’ve been wondering how he’s going to, er, handle our dear Anchor.” They would all have their turn, no matter what; and if anyone had been waiting long, it would be Kup.

The gathered nuns extended their fields and voices, reassuring their Anchor and calming him, drawing him into their circle, forgiving him this breach.

“Spinner surrendered her Anchorhold when Galena’s trials were over,” Kup said, approaching the worried shuttle and holding his gaze. “That can be your key, if you like. Surrender to your feelings, Skyfire. Surrender to Primus. There’s no sense keeping to ways that no longer best serve.” 

“Who are we to determine what best serves?” Skyfire whispered, trembling. The walls, he began to realize, were so far away. His wings, rather than folded comfortingly over his back, were extending. He felt as though they would extend wider and wider, thin and fragile, breaking against the too-distant stone, slicing the steel chandeliers. He was expanding in this open space, disintegrating, evaporating. A cry choked his vocalizer, panic rising in his lines. But then he looked to the platform, and there stood the Prime, optics black as space, arms uplifted to embrace him. 

He rushed to the platform, a storm of wings, and knelt. A barely-controlled falling to knees that would have shattered ordinary stone. Standing, the Vessel wrapped his arms around Skyfire’s neck, drawing his immense torso flush against Optimus’ body, spreading Skyfire’s knees to make room for the Prime’s feet. The contact of physical form and fields was strange. Skyfire gingerly settled his own arms around the Prime’s slender-seeming frame. 

The watching nuns joined hands, thrumming an ancient fugue. Many had their interface panels open, a few had overloaded already as they watched. Holding hands was helping them to keep from groping themselves or each other. 

// **In perfect love and perfect trust,** // Primus murmured. He stroked Skyfire’s face tenderly, brushing a thumb across parted lips. 

//You…desire this?// Skyfire bowed his head.

// **I do. I desire oneness with all my creations.** // Primus lifted the Vessel’s face, lips brushing Skyfire’s. // **The sensations you have experienced during meditation, the feelings in body and mind, were not hallucinations, Skyfire. You have been my lover long these many vorns.** // 

“Ohhh…” A small sound from such a throat, a mere gasp of air, to be so full of longing. The Vessel’s hands and mouth touched Skyfire’s body with stunning familiarity; coaxing, reassuring, caressing; bright stars in black optics holding Skyfire’s astonished attention almost more than the touches. Until first fingertips and then glossa limned the seams of his interface panel. Skyfire gasped, spreading his knees wide, arching wings and back, hands clenching. The optics blinked to mischievous blue. 

//Nothing forbids you from touching yourself,// Optimus said gently. //Or touching me.// He flicked his glossa up and down the central seam, feeling the sharply increased heat behind it, but Skyfire’s hands remained clenched on air. Reaching far under, he stroked the edges of the plating between Skyfire’s legs. //I would very much like to see your seals,// he murmured, licking more firmly. The two sections of the interface panel snapped open. Optimus and Skyfire moaned; two notes of a harmonic chord. 

Both seals were a mosaic of angular blue-white silicate, the silver lines between tesserae forming star-maps or constellations. Delicate branching lines of ruby decorated the valve seal, while a translucent stripe of intricately tiled sapphire adorned the spike seal. 

“I…I didn’t realize they were so…” Skyfire said, breaking off in wonder, extending a fingertip to touch the bright patterns. He had never seen his own seals, choosing a less direct route to meditative overload. 

“Beautiful,” Optimus said. He traced the circular outer rims, identifying another handful of constellations before applying his glossa to them. Shivering, Skyfire mantled over him, bracing his hands on his knees, optics shuttered. 

//He wants you to overload before he breaks them,// Kup explained over private comm. //He’s been transscanning them, but you and Red weren’t part of the trial, so you don’t have that mark. Guess he doesn’t want anyone to feel left out.//

//But…what of—?//

//He’ll get to them later, when they come out of seclusion. You just concentrate on yourself, Skyfire. I know I’m not alone in wanting to watch you overload. Some of us have watched you before, through your window, when you go deep, your armor glowing white in the shadows.//

Heat surged from Skyfire’s groin to his face, and back again. Optimus wrapped an arm around Skyfire’s thigh, leaning in, humming softly.

//Yeah,// Kup sent. //Look at him, Skyfire, look at how much he’s enjoying you. Know you can’t see it from up there, but his spike’s out, fully extended, and his valve is open and dripping.// 

Skyfire shouted, curling forward. Under lips and hand, Optimus could feel the structures beneath the seals thrash and clench rhythmically as he tasted a lacy blue ring sizzle into being. Sneaking in one more lick, Optimus transscanned the seals quickly, holding tight to Skyfire’s hip and thigh. That spike was going to—

A hand larger than his torso pinned Optimus to the platform. The air vibrated with a growl so deep many of the nuns felt rather than heard it. Optimus’ spike pulsed against the base of Skyfire’s wrist. An immensity pushed Optimus’ legs wide.

//I…don’t want to…hurt…you…// It was a small voice, a last shred of self-control. 

Primus laughed. // **These bodies I gave you are malleable,** // Primus reassured him. // **All shall be well!** // Optimus’ body arched against Skyfire’s hand, small dark hands stroking the long white fingers, chest rubbing up against the sensitive undersides. “Yes,” Optimus moaned, nuzzling the side of Skyfire’s index finger. Hot and slick, the tip of Skyfire’s spike pressed the rim of Optimus’ valve. Surely not… Skyfire writhed, racked with half-comprehended need…but Optimus’ hips rocked, enticing him, beguiling, provoking… Skyfire pushed harder and the tip was engulfed, the inner and outer valve rims sliding sequentially, opening, unspiralling, and segment by segment his spike went in and in, sensors fully exposed, lights within glowing incandescent. 

“From Within!” the nuns cried, knowing their Anchor would be comforted by the ritual, reminded that there was precedent, that he did not travel this path alone and exposed.

Smokescreen nodded to himself. So. There was no objection in the initiation to going right for the valve. Good to know. Optimus would give each of them what they wanted, how they wanted it, no more, definitely no less. And even though the Prime had been unfailingly gentle, watching him take Jazz’s seals was going to be _hard_.

Skyfire bowed and swayed, wings vibrating as though under a solar onslaught, and still Optimus drew him in further, opening around the encroaching spike, the plates of his ventrum armor visibly shifting. 

More. In. Farther. Optimus could feel things in his lower chest parting, opening, making a passage. Even unto his spark chamber, and the Matrix that lay anterior to it. Skyfire shuddered at the moment of contact.

The sensation began in the tip of his spike; a faint tingling. Slowly building to the definite heat and tension of electrical charge, laced with…something else. A kind of energy Skyfire could not identify, but undeniable, coursing through his spike to his valve, somehow looping, the circuit growing larger and larger, almost visible. Skyfire writhed, not daring to thrust, or to withdraw and lose the contact. He held the Vessel pinioned. Himself just as bound, as the unknown energy grew in intensity, the circuit widening further, body to body, spark to spark, the Matrix itself the crux, the crossroads. Skyfire’s head fell back, his mouth open and soundless, his optics dark as the void, pin-pricked by stars.

The immense spike within Prime at last began to move, moving his entire body in hypnotic rhythm, delicious friction beyond his valve filling him with sustained, exquisite rapture. Primus was in them both, making love to them, delighting in them, sharing with them the wholeness that was his ultimate desire for them, for all of his creations. They moved together, their bodies liquid with heat, saturated, awaiting only the merest spark to send them tumbling. Lightyears away, in the nearest stellar nursery, a new star spun and collapsed into ignition. Primus cried out in joy, Skyfire and Optimus arched against each other, shouting, glowing blue fluid fountaining from them, drenching them, steaming from their incandescent armor. 

Skyfire crashed backward, the nacelles of his engines taking the brunt of the impact, sparing his wings. His spike retracted, leaving Optimus’ body to rearrange itself, bereft. Unsteady-limbed, Optimus climbed onto him, sprawling on the shuttle’s broad white chest, wriggling the last span to be within kissing distance once Skyfire’s optics relit. Enormous, heavy arms came around him, still thrumming with power. Hands cupped his helm and aft. Optimus smiled. 

Nearly all the watching nuns had overloaded as well. Ozone crackled through the air; the scent of lubricant seeped through the more permeable of the seals, unfamiliar and intoxicating. 

Skyfire stirred, murmuring incoherent sweetnesses, his chest lifting against the alien weight there. His optics, like Optimus’, once again blue. He shifted the grip of his hands, not yet quite realizing what he was holding on to, and the smallest finger of his right hand slipped between Optimus’ legs. 

“Are you all right?” Optimus asked softly. He focused on Skyfire’s face to distract himself from the powerful desire to lift his aft and spread his legs wider. The big jet was so beautiful, and charming in his current state of befuddlement. 

“Should be…asking you…” After several tries, Skyfire’s optics focused. Prime was smiling and did not appear to have been split asunder. That was good. What in the name of Vector Sigma were his hands doing?

“Mmm. Better than all right,” Optimus purred. He tilted his head and set his lips against Skyfire’s; a tender, almost tentative kiss. He pressed more firmly as Skyfire responded, tracing the edges of the shuttle’s mouth with his glossa, slipping it just inside when Skyfire opened to him. He stroked the shuttle’s face, extending his glossa deeper to chart the unexplored fastnesses of Skyfire’s mouth. 

The smoothness of Skyfire’s canopy felt good against his ventrum and spike. He circled his hips beneath Skyfire’s hand, pressed by its weight into the curve of transparent aluminum, his spike gliding in a slippery film of lubricant. Skyfire’s smallest fingertip brushed the outer rim of Optimus’ valve, and Optimus made a small, pleasured sound in to Skyfire’s mouth, glossa stroking up underneath Skyfire’s, enticing it to extend, sucking at least the tip into his smaller mouth. Skyfire’s core and engine were designed to run at, and tolerate, much higher temperatures than the average mech. Optimus drew Skyfire’s glossa in, fascinated by its growing heat, the fever-like warmth rising up into his body from Skyfire’s chest. His spike would be blazing hot, though Optimus’ processor had been somewhat too distracted to notice that part of it before. Skyfire’s fingertip was growing hot, too, and Optimus lifted his hips more emphatically, wanting that finger inside his valve. Now. Now would be good. Skyfire twitched beneath him, optics going wide. Optimus could almost feel the impulse running through the shuttle’s arms as Skyfire apparently at last realized what he was doing. Optimus smiled and caressed Skyfire’s audials. “Push it in,” he murmured, rubbing his valve up and down to remove all doubt as to what he meant. Skyfire’s face plates heated visibly, his large optics widening to enormous – and losing focus as Optimus rolled his hips again. 

So strange! So distracting, this writhing body on his chest. Skyfire was finding it unusually difficult to think, to direct his disobedient limbs. Now, this confusing directive. Push what in where? Oh. He’d wondered earlier what his hands were doing. He could feel the hot wetness against the smallest fingertip, the perception of a small space, a hollowness wanting to be filled. His fingers, he reflected, were smaller than his spike. He curled his hand around the Prime’s aft, pressing his finger inward against the smooth rim. It slipped inside easily, and Skyfire’s CPU lit with waves of sensory data. 

“From the West!” the nuns chorused, some of them giggling. 

The Eightfold Path, Skyfire was reminded. Oh dear, he had done everything out of order! Ideally, one started in the East – casting a circle with bodies as well as minds. Could he start over? Perhaps not. The pliant, slippery walls of Prime’s valve caressed and massaged his digit, the motion of Prime’s hips drawing it in and in. The ridges and motion, the smoothness, the warmth, the trickling liquid, the bright spots of heat from the sensor lights…Skyfire was fascinated. He moved his finger in and out, bending it slightly, confident now that this would not injure Optimus. Indeed Optimus writhed and moaned, legs spread wide, optics shuttered, hands holding tight to the edges of Skyfire’s white armor. Skyfire felt his spike repressurize. 

No more of that, down there, he told himself sternly. By the grace of Primus it had worked, but Skyfire was nervous about the thought of trying it with anyone else, or even with Optimus when he wasn’t fully embodying Primus. However, that didn’t mean he should leave Optimus’ spike untouched. Nice as it felt to have Prime on his chest, Skyfire cupped his other hand around Prime’s waist and lifted him, still working his finger inside that rippling, tight valve, holding him at face level much as Prime had done with Prowl, though the size difference here was more extreme. 

The clenching of the valve around his finger was even more distracting now that he could see it, and feel the lubricants dripping down his palm, across his sensitive wrist, down his arm. Prime’s spike bobbed and waved in the air, bouncing in time with the thrusting within. Hypnotic. Skyfire leaned forward – a high-pressure front approaching – and opened his mouth, glossa extended. Optimus shuddered hard, and his valve squeezed the finger inside as Skyfire licked his spike experimentally, which rippled muscularly in response; his optics unfocused as he examined the chemical mixture. Another sample would be prudent. He licked the spike again, base to tip, lingering over each ridge and whorl, catching a surge of lubricant as it emerged from the tip. Swallowing this, he extended his glossa again, applying a little more pressure, up then down, flicking the tapered end of his glossa against the wet, pulsing rim of the valve and the base of his own finger, which was pushed up almost completely inside. Optimus surged, engine revving, vocally appreciative, and Skyfire found his own venting increase, his own spike flexing and aching, fluids deep within his pelvic structures roiling and hot. 

Remembering, despite the Primus-haze, the feel of Optimus’ valve and body around his spike, Skyfire sipped Prime’s spike into his mouth, humming as the nuns moaned, “From Below!” 

He pressed his glossa against the underside, sucking and swallowing another measure of lubricant, moving his glossa slowly up and down the silvery length, while Optimus’ hips alternately jerked unsteadily and rolled in concentrated rhythm, moving himself in Skyfire’s mouth, and on Skyfire’s finger. Skyfire timed his suction to the coordinated thrusts, finding himself even further aroused by the increased volume of Optimus’ deep moans. 

An idea occurred to him and he removed his finger from Prime’s valve. A gush of fluid followed it and Optimus groaned. Skyfire nearly put his finger back in but he did want to try something else first. He opened his mouth wide and encompassed Prime’s entire interface array, sucking gently, slipping his glossa into the waiting, grasping valve, tasting the array of fluids fully. Optimus’ head fell back, surrendering utterly to the exploration of Skyfire’s glossa.

Reaching down, as though of its own accord, Skyfire’s other hand now grasped his own spike; a fitting arrangement, he thought. The nuns cried out or hummed or moaned as he began to stroke himself, still sucking and licking Prime, charge building hard and fast through the core of his body, small lightnings dancing along the edges of his wings. He sucked harder yet, and Optimus shouted, hips bucking, thrashing into release as though it was the first time. 

The first spurt took Skyfire by surprise, though he felt silly for letting it do so. It wasn’t as though he hadn’t known what would happen. Nonetheless, he felt a portion of the sweet, hot fluid trickle down his chin. His own overload drove it from his mind in the next instant, arching his back, flaring his wings, mouth open wide with Optimus more or less sitting astride it, Skyfire’s cry of release ringing through the Prime’s body. Silver transfluid sprayed across the platform, and more than half the nuns stared in naked longing at Skyfire’s pulsing spike and thus far unplumbed valve. 

“There are, mmm, I believe, five more facets?” Optimus hummed as Skyfire set him on his feet. Both of them vented hard, optics bright. Prime’s spike still hard and extended, Skyfire’s half retracted, but twitching; unwilling to be put away just yet. 

Skyfire nodded mutely, watching as Optimus took his hand and drew it to his mouth, kissing the fingertips one by one. 

“From the East,” the nuns said, as Optimus suckled on Skyfire’s thumb, the whirl and slide of glossa sending jolts of unexpected pleasure up Skyfire’s arm. Skyfire’s spike extended fully. Optimus tucked Skyfire’s hand around his waist, patting it to encourage Skyfire to leave it there, then leaning against the shuttle’s chest, smiling as he pulled Skyfire’s face down for a nice long kiss. 

“From the South!” Optimus added a finger to his glossa, gently stroking and petting circles within Skyfire’s mouth. Optimus kissed his way down Skyfire’s body, kneeling between the shuttle’s knees, pausing at the tessellated ventrum plates, fingers seeking tender places beneath the armor. Skyfire spread his legs wider. His spike ached, but his valve ached more, hot and swimming with lubricant trapped behind the intact seal. 

“Oh, Primus,” Skyfire whispered as Optimus ran a fingertip around the outer rim, stroking the seal itself, sending vibrations deep within. Optimus continued, kissing and licking him, lower and lower, cupping the base of Skyfire’s spike, maintaining the course of his kisses out onto the top of the spike. Skyfire shuddered, moaning. The sensations were so different, valve or hands or mouth; lips and glossa and, he thought, the graze of denta as sharp lines of bright pleasure. He shuddered again as Optimus reached the tip.

Optimus could just – barely – engulf the tip with his mouth. “From Above!” cried the nuns. Stroking the shaft firmly, he fastened his mouth around the port as Skyfire overloaded, eagerly swallowing the hot gush of transfluid, licking all around the tip to collect any stray droplets. Skyfire braced his hands on his knees, venting hard, optics shuttered – and yet they still weren’t done. 

“Lie back,” Optimus encouraged, stroking Skyfire’s spike very gently as it retracted, placing a kiss on the tip once it was nestled completely in its housing. Skyfire did as he was bid, rearranging his legs with care to avoid kicking anyone. The big shuttle’s engines had subsided to a low purr. Optimus smiled. 

He placed his hand flat against the seal. Skyfire jumped minutely, spread his legs a little wider. The heat was amazing. When he pressed his fingers against the seal he could feel the fluid behind it rebound, and the tone of Skyfire’s engines jumped up a cycle. Optimus took his time, stroking and circling, tracing the silver star lines between the white tiles, leaning in now and then to kiss the slim, glimmering lines of ruby. Licking, tasting; the thin silicate was slightly porous, allowing Skyfire’s valve-scent to waft through; increasingly so as Skyfire’s temperature climbed. Optimus rumbled low in his chest, hungry with desire. 

He stroked the seal harder, pressing with his thumb in the center, jiggling to make the fluids inside dance. 

Skyfire moaned, hands clutching at the slicked stone of the platform. Even his great strength could make no mark on the corundum, but he held on to the edges, arching his back, trying to display himself even wider to Optimus; hands, yes, and optics, yes, and oh, oh yes, anything else the Prime wanted. The pressure on his seal increased and Skyfire tried to keep still, but his hips seemed to be having other ideas. There was a low _pop!_ and a sudden outwashing and easing of the fluid pressure but his valve ached even more as cool air rushed in, and a single small finger dabbled in the lubricants, tracing the circular inner rim, stroking just the outermost segments of the valve wall, while the nuns chanted “From the North!”

“Please,” Skyfire whispered, shivering. His valve had always been a blank place on his internal map, even more than his spike, which moved sometimes, when his meditation flew along certain paths. He was unprepared for the depths of these sensations. How could so small an input generate such a huge response? The finger inside him continued to move, circling the valve walls slowly, gently, rubbing circles now and then around the sensor nodes. The rest of the fingers joined it at last, spreading and contracting as they swirled, deeper and deeper, withdrawing to circle and press a singing note from the wet metal of the rim. Skyfire arched, venting vast gusts of superheated air at the steel chandeliers so far above. His spike leapt from its housing, leaking trickles of both lubricant and transfluid as the vibrations from the sustained note rang through his entire frame. 

Humming in harmony, Optimus kept his fingertip circling and bent forward to kiss the underside of the re-emerged spike. But that was as much attention is he would give it for now. Letting the note fade at last, he pushed his entire hand inside Skyfire’s valve. Bracing his other hand just outside the outer rim, he began a leisurely rhythm, rotating his hand, spreading his fingers, noting how the instinctive clenching of Skyfire’s valve soon grew more purposeful, echoing his thrusting rhythm, then finding a counterpoise; bearing down when he pushed in, drawing up when he pulled out.

“Aahh…Aaahhh!” Optimus growled, thrusting harder, faster. Skyfire’s valve writhed around his hand. This was going to be circuit-blowing on his spike! His spike surged and twitched at the thought, and he rubbed the tip high against the inside of Skyfire’s thigh, leaving a trail of lubricant on the shimmering white armor. The nuns behind him mewled. 

Faster, harder, until Skyfire cried out, valve clamping down on Prime’s hand, pulling it in to the shoulder, fluid gushing from spike and valve. Optimus let the spasms ease, Skyfire lying flat and strutless on the platform and seeming halfway to recharge, then pulled his hand out and stood. They weren’t quite done yet. 

//Skyfire?// Optimus placed his hands on Skyfire’s upper thighs, curling his fingers around the edges of his cuisses. Easer than reaching wide for those hips, though the shuttle’s faulds arched and fluted so gracefully. 

//Mmm.// Skyfire replied, indeed rather sleepy. But his optics lit and he lifted his upper torso, bracing himself on his elbows. His legs remained spread wide, his depressurized spike lying limp but fully extended on his ventrum. He could see that Prime’s spike remained upright and hard. //Mmmmm, yes!//

The nuns sang the last eldritch glyph, the mystery. Skyfire was more than ready. Optimus slid his spike inside, running the tip along the valve’s ceiling, pushing in all the way, until Skyfire clenched down hot and tight, bringing all his nodes into contact with Prime’s throbbing spike. With great effort, Optimus rippled and churned his spike, working his hips against the staggering pressure, servomotors whining with the strain. He pulled out halfway, moaning loudly, the tension on his tightly-held spike making his optical feed buzz with static. Skyfire’s upper body collapsed again to the platform, and he, like Prime, moaned with every motion, their intertwined deep voices pushing nun after nun into overload. 

Thrusting in took astonishing strength, so hard was Skyfire clamped down, even as wet as they were. The effort itself only heightened their sensations. Optimus took a firmer grip on Skyfire’s thighs, rocking into him segment by segment, feeling charge building with each thrust until his hips clanged against Skyfire’s interface housing; building higher as he reversed, pulling long and slow and hard until only the tip remained in that titanic grip. Optimus bared his denta, shaking his head in wonderment. He wouldn’t last another thrust!

Push inward he did, though, bracing his feet wide, ridge by ridge pressing into the tumultuous heat and streaming fluids; falling against Skyfire’s body, completely sheathed within as the clutch-and-release of overload pounded through them, and the spray of Optimus’ overload filled even Skyfire’s now expanding, cavernous valve, spilling over their legs and Skyfire’s aft. Optimus, shaking, optics flicking from blue to black and back again, pulled out as the stream eased somewhat, and marked Skyfire’s legs and ventrum thoroughly. There was no question that Skyfire had been well and completely initiated, but the glowing silver-blue shimmered like a reflection nebula on Skyfire’s bright armor. 

By now the sun shone warm and golden through the high windows, and Ratchet had returned, fully rested and refueled. He and Hoist brought Optimus and Skyfire energon and helped Skyfire wobble from the platform while Perceptor scanned the Vessel rather more scrupulously than necessary. Optimus winked at him, enjoying the scientist’s resultant blush.

Grapple and Hoist ascended to the platform together. They encompassed the Vessel, embracing and surrounding him. They had often meditated together over the vorns, watching each other sink level by level into sacred pleasure, synchronizing their venting, their energon pumps, their overloads. Amused and honored, they spread their legs for the transscans: Grapple’s seals gleamed thick and sturdy with gold and topaz, limned in platinum, the inner and outer rims composed of structural-grade titanium alloys. Hoist’s thin, fragile seals were of smouldering emerald, dotted with tiny citrines and selenite spars. Both were laced with blue. It took both strength and finesse to break Grapple’s seals, but Hoist’s were delicate, easily damaged, yet impressive with their inner layers of beauty. 

Their limbs tangled with Prime’s in open abandon, spikes and valves slippery, seeking and finding, fluids commingled, hands and mouths never still. Overloads took them in strengthening waves, leaving them steaming and sated, propped together in mutually-balanced disarray. 

After them came Windcharger, flinging himself at Optimus with laughter and kisses, reminding him poignantly of Springarm, who had been killed early in the war, thwarting an assassination attempt by the Senate on the Prime they had appointed, thinking him a weak, easily manipulated idealist. Windcharger’s seals were ruby and labradorite, titanium and pewter, a simpler pattern than the others’ but forthright and pleasing. He approached interface with enthusiasm and good humor despite his lack of sophisticated technique. Primus and Optimus enjoyed him thoroughly. Kup had to carry him off the platform and delivered his purring, strutless frame into the tender care of Brawn and Trailbreaker.

Before Kup could turn and approach the platform for his own initiation, arms wrapped around him. A hand rubbed firmly at his crotch, a tender mouth nibbled his audials and neck cables, a big, hot spike moved against his aft and lower back. He was drawn, gasping and shivering, up onto the platform, interface panel gaping wide, hips circling in uncoordinated thrusts against the hand now caressing his seals. He tried to get a good look at the Vessel’s optics, but the big mech held him fast, kissing and fondling him hungrily, optics shuttered. 

Kup was in no wise eager to halt the proceedings. But he didn’t want the young Librarian to miss out on what could well be the jewel of his collection. “Just for a moment,” Kup gasped. “Let him…?” Denta nipped him, punctuating the kisses, hot and sharp like energon spiked with flecks of magnesium. 

Some of the most ancient datatrax in the Solian Order’s library told a different story of the origin of the Thirteen, and indeed of Primus and Unicron themselves. Primus had not created the Thirteen in order to defeat his brother, with whom he was in balance, not conflict. He created them because making, creating, bringing forth were his natural functions. His spark had longed for company – and it had laughed them into being, delighted with the very idea.

An echo of that gentle laughter now huffed softly against Kup’s audial. He was lifted, and the big spike pushed between his legs, the tip curling upward to nose inquisitively at the rim of his valve seal. Kup gasped, sagging heavily against the arms around him. Discipline, slaggit! Discipline! Fine example he was setting for the novices. 

// **I have given him the scans of all your seals,** // Primus chuckled, lipping Kup's neck cables. // **Since he deems them of value.** // 

//All of us? Even--?//

// **Those in seclusion will decide for themselves, as all those present have.** //

//What about--?//

// **The unpledged, being too young, are not bound by the Order's strictures as yet. Their choice remains before them. Does that satisfy you?** // Primus rubbed harder at Kup's seals, a single fingertip concaving the valve seal such that a weaker, thinner seal would have broken. Squirming, breathless, Kup tried to formulate a wisecrack about just whose satisfaction was involved here, but his CPU seemed to have too much in the queue already – was he really going to overload just from this? He was so old the high points of his black armor had worn to grey, and it usually took a lot of work from his mind to get his body revved up. But charge ran bright and crackling beneath his armor, trickling along his thin endoform, chased by the Vessel's wandering hands and mouth and spike, and Kup arched in those powerful arms as Primus bit the angle between shoulder and neck, and Kup's spike slid free of its housing, through the seal and into the Vessel's hand. 

The Vessel stroked him, slick grip becoming slippery with Kup's transfluid. A fingertip pressed into Kup's mouth, and he climaxed again, glossa flicking in uncoordinated licks as between his legs the big spike pulsed, thick and heavy but contained. The finger withdrew from his mouth, that hand moving down Kup's body slowly, lingering, circling here and there, brushing the rim of Kup's retracted spike, smoothing over his upper thigh - then grasping his leg, pulling it upward, spreading him wide in rampant display as the other hand circled his valve seal. Kup bared his denta, curling his hips forward, keenly aware of the avid stares of the watching nuns. The fingers at his valve seal alternately rubbed and pressed, then delicately scratched across the surface; a change of sensation that made Kup writhe and grind against the restraining limbs. 

The Vessel turned him, lifted him, never losing contact, until Kup sat, legs spread wide, upon Optimus’ upper arms, with his back resting against Optimus’ forearms. Taking full advantage of this positioning, the Vessel engulfed Kup’s valve seal with his mouth, alternately licking hard and sucking harder, creating pressure waves that made Kup gasp and writhe. He felt the pulses from valve to throat, hot and dizzying. The fluid gathering inside him sloshed with his uncoordinated movements, deliciously tripping delicate internal pressure sensors – and spilling out of him in a hot cascade when the Vessel’s glossa pierced his valve seal, drinking all that he gave. Licking and slurping at his valve with pleased noises that were somehow both animalistic and divine. Kup’s spike repressurized hard, twitching as Primus kissed the underside before resuming his enthusiastic devouring of Kup’s valve. 

The ancient nun spread his legs as wide as they would go, spreading his dignity to the air, trusting the strength of the Vessel’s arms completely. The Vessel’s glossa licked and flicked harder, faster, and Kup’s spike bumped against the Vessel’s crest, and the wet, deep sounds of enjoyment sent waves of charge across Kup’s armor. He arched and trembled, hydraulics gasping, overloading so hard his processor reset.

“ **There,** ” Primus said, rather pleased, lowering Kup gently to his unsteady pedes. “ **I believe you are thoroughly lubricated.** ”

Kup snorted. He was dripping down his thighs and Primus knew where else…Well, Primus did know, since it was his doing. Kup wrapped his arms around the Vessel's neck, opening his mouth and kissing him hungrily, his glossa swirling against the Vessel's. The hands on his body moved with leisurely attentiveness, but the Vessel's fields and body responded to his urgency; the Vessel's spike slipping and sliding over Kup's plating as Kup wrapped his legs around the Vessel's waist. 

// **Now, my awaited one?** //

//Yes,// Kup replied, almost snarling with desire. //Yes!//

Later, even Perceptor could only shake his head, unsure of what he'd perceived. Had Kup grown larger as gravity released them and their pedes lifted gently from the platform, or had Prime grown smaller? Radar had always been muzzy within the sanctuary's walls. Had the Vessel's armor flowed as though molten and taken on different shapes, different hues, or was that the shifting light from the clerestory windows? The Vessel’s optics were black as the void, bright with the universe, and his fields rose like hemispheres of a world unfurling. 

And Kup watched every primal flicker of emotion cross that face as the Vessel's spike pressed into him. He gave himself over to the heat and sensations as the Vessel moved in and against him; the wide unspiralling of his valve, exposing every sensory node to pressure and exquisite friction; the ripple and rhythm of their ventrums against his repressurized spike between them; the press of fingertips into seams and under armor; the Vessel's mouth and glossa mimicking the thrust and pull below, setting up a circuit of charge and reflected motion. Lubricants ran down their thighs as their legs entwined. A circle of blue optics watched as they turned and writhed slowly together several meters above the platform. 

More flexible than he would have given himself credit for at his age, Kup flexed hard into overload, his valve clenching tight as the Vessel continued to thrust, silver transfluid adding to the iridescent, abstract mosaic of fluids below. 

When Kup rebooted, he couldn't tell if he was right side up or upside down. The Vessel had opened him here and there, exploring, kissing and licking exposed endoform, turning Kup this way and that, sucking on fingers or spike or audials as they presented themselves. Kup twitched and gasped, body still ringing from the last overload, already crackling with charge building toward another. Grasping after something resembling self-possession (hard to do with fingers scissoring and stroking in his valve), he held on to the Vessel's thighs, finding spike and valve within his own licking range. 

Kup drew the Vessel’s spike into his mouth, intrigued by the tang of sensitive metals, the clear, slippery sweetness of the lubricant, the vivid, teeming zing of blue transfluid beading on the tip. He dipped fingers into the Vessel’s valve, stroking absently – his main attention was on exploring every segment and whorl and sensor niche on that spike. Primus groaned and hummed around Kup’s spike, sending incredibly distracting vibrations through him, sucking him firmly whenever Kup overloaded. This position, Kup realized, had its attractions, but it was terribly hard to concentrate on what he was doing as opposed to what was being done to him. 

The fact that they now hovered about five meters above the platform only vaguely impinged itself on Kup’s processor. Accessing the freefall maneuvering programming sidetracked him slightly more. Anticipating – as he would – Kup’s desire, the Vessel’s interface array reversed itself as Kup hooked one leg over the Vessel’s hip, twining the other with the Vessel’s wonderfully long and shapely legs. Kup dedicated a file to remembering every moment of this, every nanosecond of the Vessel's hands around his waist, their interface equipment pounding into each other, and the low growls coming from...maybe both of them, rising to echoing roars until they were both liberally spattered with glowing blue, and so was the ceiling, and so were the steel chandeliers.

Had they sunk to the floor? They must have. Kup lay there, panting. The optics above him - when they unshuttered - were blue. Optimus gently pushed Kup's thighs apart. There couldn't be much left of his seals but that seemed to be what the young Prime was after, licking and sucking and nibbling thoughtfully at the rims of valve and spike, humming softly as though even the molecular traces were delicious. Silver and turquoise, jade and aquamarine, and carefully nurtured filigree of microscopic verdigris. His seals had been thick; not structurally reinforced like Grapple's, but layered with overlapping and interconnected films, each stratum telling the story of his meditation, his deepest thoughts, his spiritual growth. Optimus, Kup was sure, was more interested in these things, in the symbology, than in the rare minerals. Kup's spike pressurized under the focused attention; slowly, as there wasn't much fluid left in his tanks, but a valiant effort was put forth, and his valve quivered, flush with moisture. 

The intensity of his desire could still surprise him. Kup pushed the young Prime onto his back and straddled him, fitting himself to Optimus' reversed equipment with a low moan. Ah, so hot, so good! He leaned forward, hips working, braced on the angular red plates of Optimus' lower thoracic armor, only laterally aware of the Prime's hands stroking his thighs. He let the charge build as it would, pumping faster as it seethed through his body, until overload rolled through him, slow and powerful and inescapable as an ion storm over Veritinus XII. 

There was an unwillingness in him, even now, to let this moment in his long lifetime be over. He did not withdraw, his valve continuing to squeeze and ripple around the young Prime's spike. 

Small motions, small ellipses. He was halfway to powering down, watching the Vessel’s venting grow smoother and softer. Optimus had ventral plates made for stroking, far as Kup was concerned. Smooth and sleek, with an interesting pattern of tessellation and the small running lights of his alt mode that drew the gaze, drew the hand. Optics shuttered, lips parted, Optimus looked as though he might fall into recharge any moment, too. But around Kup’s spike, the valve fluttered and pulled and sucked hungrily, massaging him into a series of brief, gentle overloads. 

//Should rest, Prime,// Kup told him, settling into the gravity of Optimus' body. //No one would fault you.// 

"Mmm." A noncommittal hum. It was morning again already. Optimus pulled him up for a sleepy kiss, stroking his helm and shoulders. 

Kup sighed. Optimus was in the grip of their god, blue optics or no. Perhaps he could not rest until the initiations were complete. 

A young, rebellious part of him still reluctant, Kup sat up, touched Optimus' face tenderly, stood. Many initiations lay ahead. There was Jazz, waiting his turn with more patience than Kup would have expected from the passionate mech; trembling, but not pacing or tapping appendages in time to music only he could hear. Kup smiled and gave up his place on the platform. Later. There would be opportunities to pleasure the young Prime later. 

//You don’t have to,// Smokescreen reminded Jazz. Jazz paused, turned a wry little smile over his shoulder at his friend. 

//I know. Gonna be fine, Smokey.// His ascent to the platform was neither hasty nor hesitant. It was, he realized, a safe space as well as sacred. Upon the platform with the Vessel was somehow both intensely private, and communally reassuring, surrounded by the watchful presence of his fellow nuns. 

Optimus lay on his back where Kup had left him, loose-limbed and dark-opticked, with a languor that would have evoked satiety in anyone else. Dark, sapphire blue optics followed Jazz’s every move, shamelessly traced every line and curve of his frame. The Vessel lifted his upper body, braced on his arms, turned his hips toward Jazz. The interface panel was closed. Reboot, then. So be it. Jazz’s panel wasn’t open either, though he could feel the buzz of heat and charge stirring the low, slow roll of fluids down there. Mmm. Flickers of charge zipped through him, crotch to chest as he stepped within the bounds of the Prime’s field. Heliopause. Closer, closer. There would be no mark left within him, mind or spark, of Sentinel, after this. Sapphire optics now flecked with stars met his gaze. 

Oh Primus, Jazz thought, and that was right. 

The Vessel tucked his legs beneath him, kneeling much as he had for the last Trial, knees well apart. The interface panel remained closed, but showed white hot on Jazz’s IR channels. Keeping the panel closed like that took some control. 

“ **Would you like my hands to be bound?** ” Primus asked, as Jazz stopped at the very limit of physical reach. Primus drew the Vessel’s arms up, crossed the wrists behind the neck. Jazz felt as though a fission reactor had just come online between his legs. He knew just what kind of control rod he wanted. “ **I’ll take that as a yes.** ” The nuns behind the Vessel murmured and pointed. Jazz sidestepped, peeking around the Prime’s broad shoulders as metal clinked softly on metal, the Prime’s armor reconfiguring itself into cuffs binding vambraces to backplates. The Vessel’s hands folded over one another as though in prayer. 

Jazz felt his interface panel retract.

His seals were elaborate whirls and foldings of silver, pure and untarnished, fractal-complex, drawing the optic and mind. The Vessel watched him unabashedly, his armor already warm to the touch. “ **This time you can use your mouth,** ” Primus said. “ **And so can I.** ” 

Jazz shivered, optics shuttering, but he held his ground. Leaning down and forward, the Vessel kissed and licked slow, braided trails down Jazz’s body, tracing seams, dipping between plates that Jazz held open, the endoform beneath already hot; bowing more deeply to reach the seals. Jazz gasped as the hot glossa caressed him. Places Sentinel had never reached. And that was enough of that mech, Jazz thought. Enough of thinking about him, and he was dead now, and maybe he had died well, at the end, doing properly by his people once he’d remembered what his true duty was, set by Optimus’ example. Jazz spread his legs, tilting his hips up, held on to Optimus’ helm and shoulder as that glossa circled and flicked and lapped at him. He brought into active memory the sight of Prowl’s spike emerging into Optimus’ mouth – and gasped at the sudden spear of desire that lanced through him. Optimus pushed a shoulder between Jazz’s legs, spreading him wider, and Jazz obliged, standing on one leg as he hooked the other up and over, finding the narrow space between the Prime’s head and bound up arm. Jazz held tighter to Optimus’ helm, rocking slowly as Optimus kept licking, kissing the rims, sucking on them. His spike seal rose, the pressure from behind it taking up all the space in Jazz’s mind and the Vessel opened his mouth around it, glossa flicking harder and harder. A tiny tear in the center bubbled fluid and Optimus suckled at it, licking it wider to reveal the gleaming head of Jazz’s spike. 

“Primus gave Optimus scans of all our seals,” Kup announced, to forestall any concern that Jazz was being slighted. “Primus is anxious to taste your spikes, to fill your valves.” Kup sat rather abruptly against the wall. He wanted to watch this one, see Jazz mended for good and all… But he was… just…so…

He fell offline. Sideswipe and Sunstreaker picked him up gently and carried him to his cell.

The Vessel pulled back for a moment to admire his work, to appreciate this moment of nearly there, of imminence. One more lick would do it. Jazz trembled, looking down at himself and the closeness of Optimus’ mouth. He ached. Another trickle of liquid seeped from the tip, running hot down his valve seal and down his leg, drawing a sheeny line down the inside of his white thigh, the intricate curves of his knee mechanisms, the long swooping lines of his black greave. It wouldn’t even take a lick – his spike pulsed, impulses to writhe and spiral-thrash not fully formed yet from CPU to efferent nodes and actuators. The tip of Prime’s glossa emerged slowly from between his lips, moving toward the small rent and the sensitive metal behind it. 

Jazz half shouted, half whimpered, thrusting his hips sharply as his spike sprang free and into the Prime’s waiting mouth. Optimus sucked hard, his glossa rubbing the underside of the spike from base to tip and Jazz overloaded, thin transfluid streaming from him, though all the while he became increasingly aware of his empty valve. Maybe not letting Optimus use his fingers wasn’t such a great idea. He wished he could spread his legs wider, as if that would somehow spread his interface array wider, to take in every part of Prime, to fill himself with the Vessel even as his spike emptied itself, retracting with little jerks and starts, reluctantly into its housing. There were sighs and murmurs around them, but Jazz paid little attention. He pushed Optimus back and back, so that the Vessel was arched onto the platform, knees and greaves and hands and elbows touching the slippery stone, but his body arched enticingly taut, a platform itself, to be explored and…ridden. 

Jazz saw that even bound as he was, Optimus was appreciative and responsive, even under Jazz’s unpracticed hands. The small writhings and shivers and purrs and hums were not contrived, but simply the sort of reaction Optimus would have, given the kind of body and mind he had, only influenced by Primus, not controlled. This was not a heavy-handed occupation, no coerced possession, and Jazz took comfort from that.

Standing, reluctantly releasing his hold on Prime’s helm, Jazz came from Prime’s “north” end, so to speak, spreading his legs and half kneeling to place his crotch over Prime’s face. He could see the red and silver arc of Prime’s torso like this, see the full, thick column of Prime’s erect spike, waiting for him down there. He was going to have that up inside him, and soon. He rubbed his valve seal rim over Prime’s mouth. He could feel his spike heating up again already, and that was fine, but he wanted some valve action before getting on with the other. Breaking the valve seal with the glossa seemed to Jazz to be the kindest, tenderest way, of all the ways he’d seen so far. It was what made his engine rev hardest, watching. That big glossa, powerful as a smaller mech’s spike, flicking and licking in and in, so wet and hot and good and Jazz was so, so ready. Optimus was happy to oblige. Jazz touched Prime’s face; the smooth, rather broad planes, the edges of cheek guards, the intent set to the brows, traced the lips when they were not engaged or stretched over the circumference of the rim. Optimus hummed and closed his optics, pressing into these caresses, and Jazz understood that lips were sensitive, faces were sensitive, and Prime liked kissing. And that hum, against his parts, oh Primus. Jazz tried not to buck into it, but his hip gimbals were trembling.

“Open me,” Jazz moaned, trying not to shove Prime’s head down. The exposed cables of Prime’s neck begged to be kissed and nibbled – or to have Jazz rub his spike over…and Jazz’s spike extended, dripping lubricant, heavily erect and enthused about that idea. Rubbing his spike anywhere on Prime sounded like a wonderful thought. Optimus thrust his glossa against his seal, not a strike, but a long slow push, the tension as the metal stretched wringing another cry from Jazz and nearly another overload as at last it gave, and the glossa was washed with lubricant and free to explore the interior, sensor lights flickering on ring by ring, drawing Jazz’s awareness inside. Had he wanted to be filled before? Had he ached to have his valve touched? It was a screaming torrent of need now – and now, when Jazz most wanted strong, hard touches, Optimus licked him softly, slowly, pressing the remnants of his seal into the walls of his valve, savoring their edges and the released flavor of the exotic, nameless alloys of which they had been made. Jazz braced his hands on Prime’s chest, splaying his fingers, drawing the sharp tips up across the broad plates of armor slowly. He would take this for as long as he could, caressing the Prime as he was being caressed. 

Over in a corner, Tracks whimpered and then fled the hall.

Jazz was gong to overheat. He was going to melt into a puddle of slag right here in front of everyone. He was already dripping down between his legs, melting from the inside out. He scrabbled at Prime’s chassis, hips jerking in rough circles though that glossa kept up its steady, determined work. He ached to move, to go around to the other end of the arch and straddle Prime’s hips, spreading himself over that spike…but he couldn’t move. The glossa moved deeper inside him, flick flick, licking circles, scraping the tip across the valve’s roof until Jazz gave a high cry and overloaded again, spraying more silver from his turgid spike, splattering Prime’s upper chest. It dripped into his neck cabling, the color bright against the darker mechanisms. Jazz at last pulled back, sitting down on the stone platform, venting hard for a moment. Legs still spread for all to see.

Yes, sharing was better than covert groping in the dark alone. He would be taken in the light, in good company. Unsteadily he got up, and using Prime’s arched body as a railing, made his way to Optimus’ groin. 

He had meant, of course, to climb up and lower himself onto that spike immediately. Until he saw Prime’s valve, dripping and hot and blue-lit within, beckoning, ensorcelling Jazz’s spike. Come in me…fit yourself to me…come in me… Jazz stepped deftly between Prime’s spread knees, black greaves brushing the polished thighs, and oh his spike twitched then, too, such alluring legs; and grasping the blue faulds Jazz aimed himself carefully, holding back now to tease himself and Prime and their audience. Someone moaned loudly as a droplet of fluid formed on the tip of Jazz’s spike. 

He slid inside. Shouting as the valve clamped down around his length, rippling and massaging him and now he understood the reactions of the others; this interior dance had not been visible to those watching. Jazz hadn’t known valves could do this, not really, despite the vague, strange sensations he had sometimes felt in his own when reaching the greatest depths of meditation. Now he knew why all the mechs before had seated themselves and then writhed uncontrollably, some overloading once hard right off and others multiply even without thrusting. 

“O Primus,” Jazz cried and sang. “Primus! Primus!” He could only hang on, pushed in as far as he could go, rim on rim, while things were done to him, wringing sound and unimagined pleasure from him over and over. He was dimly aware of vibrations through the Prime’s frame, Optimus’ low humming rising slowly with each of Jazz’s climaxes, valve pulling every last drop of transfluid from the spearmech until he lay spent and limp across Prime’s lower body. 

// **You’re not done yet,** // Primus reassured him, tone lascivious and pleased. Jazz’s spike tried to give up one last spurt but there was nothing. He was empty. Empty spaces needed to be filled. Oh yes. 

Jazz was tired of this game, though, of keeping this sweet young Prime bound. Enough of that. Optimus’ hands came free as the thought coalesced in Jazz’s processor. Optimus creaked and groaned and rearranged himself somewhat. As exciting as his taut, constrained body had been, to see him sprawled, limbs spread, spike hard and ready… Jazz felt himself revving hot again, if not hotter. 

Optimus brought his hands up, stroking the nun gently as Jazz crawled onto him. Jazz sat across Prime’s lower ventrum, knowing how close that spike rose behind by the heat coming off it. Jazz lifted his aft, bowing his head and shuttering his optics, concentrating on that heat, the nearness of it, another tease, one he could not maintain for long. He lifted his aft a little higher, poised himself above the glistening tip. His own spike pushed its tip from its housing, hopelessly optimistic until his transfluid tank refilled. 

The tip of the Vessel’s spike nuzzled Jazz’s aft. Hot and wet and squirming, curling forward in its search for the entrance, bumping as if by accident against the valve rim. Jazz tilted his hips, compelled by his own need, feeling as though his valve gaped wide as the Sonic Canyons, wanting, dripping to be filled. He wrapped a hand around the thick shaft – feeling it up through his arm somehow, as though the spike’s fields by themselves were strong enough to affect his internal energies. It was hot, and slippery. He gripped harder and Optimus moaned, head rolling from side to side; the tip continuing to squirm and strain to attain entry. Optimus’ hands on his body remained gentle, but they trembled now and then.

So did Jazz. Oh Primus, no, he couldn’t keep this up. He pressed himself down onto the spike, head thrown back, body tautly upright. He marveled at the feel of his hips and internal mechanisms shifting to make room, his valve mesh stretching so pleasurably, exposing every sensor. For a moment he sat there, balanced, both of them venting heavily. 

Then it began, as Jazz knew it would. Prime’s spike inside him began to move. Gently at first, a slow gyre, the tip tracing little circles at the apex of Jazz’s valve. Jazz’s mouth fell open, his optics guttered. Optimus’ hands wrapped heavily around Jazz’s hips, holding him down. 

“Aah…aaaaah! Oh Primus! Primus!” The spike moved slowly faster, strokes firm, bending his body from within. Jazz’s valve tried to clamp down, rippling hard around it – the familiar kind of overload in a way, as he remained mostly transfluidless. His valve poured lubricant, though, streaming over Prime’s groin and thighs, into his valve to mingle with the lubricants there. Jazz rode the wave of it, and the one that followed sharp and bright, but he brought discipline to bear at last before he could be drowned a third time. He concentrated on his valve, that rippling, fluttering movement. Which could be directed. He squeezed, experimenting, moving the stricture from outer rim inward, and then reversing the direction.

“ **Yes** ,” Primus said, starry optics half-closed. “ **Mmmmm. Like that.** ” 

Jazz rolled his hips slightly, then stopped. That motion, too, could be made internally, though it was trickier. He managed a rough circle, his valve bending and swaying around the slick spike, sensors slipping. Primus hummed again, pleased, and the tip of the Vessel’s spike traced little stars inside Jazz’s valve. Jazz made incoherent noises, but pressed on. Instead of squeezing in rings around the circumference, he pressed lengthwise ridges inward, up and down and in juddering, feathering spirals. 

“ **AaaaAAAAHNNNNNNHH!** ” Prime’s hips came up off the floor.

Jazz grinned and went through the sequence again. He would do this for megacycles if it caused Prime to make sounds like that. He made a dance of it, now and then lifting his hips and plunging down again, but always keeping up the rhythmic motions of his valve. Faster, faster, following the pace of their venting. Jazz rose up, trembling on the peak only for a moment before rocking down, grinding down, shuddering hard through a white-hot flare of overload, Prime’s shout ringing through his helm and chest, Prime’s blue transfluid spraying so hard within he thought the ancient interior seals might open upon a pod chamber neither he nor anyone else had any longer, filling him with Primus’ essence and new life. 

He couldn't recall the feel of Sentinel's hands on him. He knew it had happened, but his entire body now tingled and buzzed with Primus' touch. He wriggled up Optimus, closer to his face, touching the plates softly. Optimus stirred, blinking, blue-eyed, concern knitting his brows.

//There you are,// Jazz said, finding himself relieved, though that felt somewhat traitorous. //What happens to _you_ when Primus takes over?//

Optimus smiled. //I’m still here. I can feel and hear everything.// His tone grew lascivious. //I give over control of my body willingly. I could perhaps override his movements, but I am…rather enjoying what he’s doing with me.//

Jazz smirked. //I bet!//

Optimus’ expression grew thoughtful. //Strangely, however, I cannot see.// He bit his lower lip and Jazz squirmed, delighted. //No, that’s not it exactly. I…see so much all at once that my CPU cannot make sense of it.//

“So,” Jazz spoke aloud, considering that his fellow nuns ought to know this, too. “When your optics go starry black, you’re blind?”

“Starry black? Is that what they look like? Interesting. Effectively, yes.” Murmurs circled and reflected around the hall. Jazz wasn’t the only one uncertain about that. Optimus didn’t seem too bothered, though. Well. The compensation was obvious. 

//Your hands will always be welcome on my body,// Jazz said, meaning it. Optimus shook his head very slightly, kissing his cheek guard.

//I will always ask,// he said.

Jazz grinned. And that was why. Although, it looked to Jazz like Optimus, once this initiation phase was over, would be spending most of his time with his hands full of Prowl. He knew his twin. Trust Prowl to fall hard and fast for someone who hadn’t exactly but sort of beat him at his favorite complicated game. Prowl had stayed in the control room with Red, watching the perimeter, Jazz would bet, rather than the hall. Not wanting, maybe, to see Prime lavish such care on everyone else…

No, that was unworthy. It was odd to think of his brother in such terms, but Jazz knew Prowl’s real reason for staying away had more to do with controlling his own passions than avoiding having to observe the passions of others. 

Speaking of others, Jazz knew he should let the next person take their initiation. He wriggled into a last kiss and left the platform. This Prime would belong to all of them, always.

A short, rather hemispherical mech – black except for his face and star markings on his chest; his name, aptly enough, was Cosmos – approached shyly. His shyness evaporated quickly once his citrine and emerald seals, dotted with ruby cabochons, were revealed, and he pursued all the facets of his initiation with joyful enthusiasm.

Moonracer’s seals were made of amazonite and aquamarine and silver; and it was she who discovered the extent to which the Prime was ticklish.

Watching contentedly, Jazz lounged against the wall, letting his knees splay, his spike finally refilling, venturing out of its housing in a leisurely way. Smokescreen seemed to be having difficulty looking at anything else.

//Get up there,// Jazz private commed, //and then after you can do more with my spike than stare.//

Smokescreen almost coughed up a cog.

Optimus eyed him appreciatively. Smokescreen’s armor was mostly white, with a broad black stripe running down his chest, ventrum, and pelvic plates. Here and there black crossguards accented his sleekly powerful shape. Long, black chevrons swept back from his forehelm. The Vessel held out a hand, and Smokescreen stepped up to the platform.

He looked back at Jazz and opened his panel. 

Smokescreen stood motionless as the Vessel licked him, first relishing the stretched pressure of his spike seal. Watching with his head cocked, intrigued by the rapt expression on the Prime’s face, yet all the while he imagined Jazz touching his spike. His seals were garnet and lapis, bright aluminum white and carbon black, ringed with the trial’s sigil of blue. He imagined Jazz licking his spike and the seal gave way.

He liked the feel of Prime’s big hand curved to fit his aft, guiding him down to the valley between body and thigh, but he thought of Jazz’s valve, and how it would feel to have Jazz guide him into it. Watching the Vessel initiate Jazz had nearly done him in; Smokescreen wanted this coupling, this freeing. He positioned himself, pressed down upon the Prime’s spike, felt the give and sudden slide, the spreading, the filling oh Primus yes that, and the rhythm was easy enough. Prime’s other hand cupped his helm, thumb brushing lips parted around ventilation hot from Smokescreen’s core. Prime’s spike in him was enough, the strictures satisfied. Smokescreen wanted to save his own spike for another valve.

He rode faster, leaning forward, head turned aside from offered kisses. The Prime’s hands on him were understanding, stroking just enough to coax his inner fires higher. Smokescreen’s back arched, wings high; he grabbed the Prime’s thighs as overload shook through him. Watching him, drinking the sight of his body, his straining but untouched spike, the Prime curled forward, intent, following on the short high path and Smokescreen gasped, valve flooding with shockingly hot fluid, spilling out of him as he lifted himself away. Optimus helped him untangle his legs, made sure he could stand. Nodded in Jazz’s direction and smiled. 

Smokescreen made a high, thin sound, finally overcome, and leapt into Optimus’ arms for one wild sweet kiss. He left the platform in regret, but left it nonetheless. 

//Smokey,// Jazz private commed, reaching for his friend’s hands. //Are you glitched? Why—?//

// _Because_ ,// Smokescreen replied, stepping close, touching only the sides of his helm. //Shut up, shut up, shut up…// His words and harmonics were rough and urgent, but his mouth was gentle, hesitant, brushing Jazz’s lips tenderly, venting hot into Jazz’s surprised mouth. //Please… If you want… Oh, Jazz…// His hands dropped to his sides and he stood motionless but for his venting, bare millispans separating their lips, their chests. Smokescreen would not touch him again unless Jazz willed it. 

//Call that a kiss?// Jazz said, low and amused. //After that last snog with Prime?// He closed the minute distance between them, his turn to take Smokey by the helm, keenly aware of the other places their bodies were touching, and led him away from the platform, to an empty spot by the east wall. The direction of beginnings.

The remaining nuns looked at each other, then at Kup – who had awakened from recharge by this time – and Perceptor, unsure. 

“Once you’ve been initiated,” Kup said, “you’re divorced from that set of strictures. You don’t have to wait until all of us have gone. We didn’t last time, anyway.”

“I concur,” Perceptor said, nodding. It was difficult enough maintaining one’s composure given the current proceedings. He watched Smokescreen and Jazz determinedly for a moment, until the impulse to gaze longingly at a certain young scout had passed. 

Jazz and Smokescreen were already well past caring or noticing anything outside the fevered, intimate light of their own little circle. 

Inferno went up to the platform next. He was easygoing, uncomplicated on the surface, like Springer; and like Springer he was handily of a height with Prime. His seals were ruby laced with titanium white, chrome and gold, in circular, outward-pointing patterns that resembled intricate flames.

Firestar joined them before Inferno’s turn was done, much to Inferno’s delight. She was practical and strong, and her seals shone with ruby, copper, gold, and the surprising contrast of celestite – matching the color of her optics. 

Brawn pierced himself on Prime’s spike almost roughly, and then immediately thrust into Prime’s valve the moment his short but satisfyingly thick spike emerged. As he rode, though, he kept looking at Prime’s spike. It was looking better and better, until he just couldn’t stand it! He was about to switch again, when Prime reversed his equipment and satisfied all of Brawn’s urges at once. His seals had been jasper and malachite and steel – blue-ringed and patterned with rough geometrics, and thicker than Grapple’s. 

Brawn left the Vessel with a tender kiss when he was done, glaring around at the other nuns, daring them to comment. Optimus lay motionless on the platform for a moment, seemingly alone.

“Hurry up before my joints seize!” 

Optimus sat up and looked around. 

“I just lubed everything this morning! Some time this vorn would be nice, come _on_!” Another stocky minibot lay on the platform, spread-eagled, interface panel wide open, heels hammering at the floor with impatience. “I’m not getting any younger!”

//That’s Gears,// Kup private commed, shaking his head. 

“Hello, Gears,” Optimus said, scooting around to sit beside the vibrating minibot. He stroked Gears’ legs and torso gently, but Gears was having none of that, grabbing the Prime’s hand and placing it firmly where he wanted it – between his legs. Moaning happily, Gears jiggled his hips, grinding his seals against Optimus’ fingers. Intricate, interlocking shapes of ruby and sapphire, limned in platinum, adorned Gears’ seals, the grace and artistry of the forms and textures belying the mech’s apparent abrasive personality. Optimus’ smile broadened as he bent his head to kiss and lick them. 

“Ooh, ahh, yeah that’s nice,” Gears moaned. “But for Primus’ sake, just spike me already!”

“As you wish,” Optimus murmured, lashing his glossa once more around the tented bulge of the spike seal. He positioned himself, inverting his interface array again since Gears was in such a hurry, pressing Gears’ short legs wider. He meant to push in slowly, but Gears jinked his hips up, impaling himself, the valve within hungry and grasping, spilling hot lubricant in runnels between his legs and down his aft and into his hip mechanisms; at the same time burying his wetly emerging spike in Prime’s ready valve, squeaking as he felt it clamp down. 

Supporting himself at full length on knees and elbows, Optimus obeyed the pace Gears demanded via tugs on his faulds, as Gears wiggled and writhed beneath him. It was apparent from his enthusiastic vocalizations that the minibot was enjoying himself thoroughly. Optimus reached down to caress Gears’ helm. The Prime was flexible, but kissing Gears in this position was quite improbable.

And then Huffer stuck his open crotch under Optimus’ face. 

“Me next! Me next!” Huffer jiggled and bounced, as insistent as Gears. “Your equipment ‘ll probably malfunction before I get my chance, so just get in there with your fingers and glossa, if you don’t mind.”

Optimus didn’t mind. 

Huffer’s seals were amethyst and jasper, gold-laced and blue-ringed. They were already hot and pliant beneath Prime’s glossa, parting easily so the fluids from valve and spike could be sipped, so fingertips could explore the ruffling folds and glittering amber sensor-lights within, so a sensitive mouth could nuzzle and engulf a newly awakened spike.

Clenching valve and spraying silver and a high-pitched shriek signaled Gears’ overload, rattling through his small frame for quite a long time. Optimus allowed himself to release amid this tempest, filling Gears with glowing blue, and withdrawing to mark him from thigh to shoulder, continuing to climax as he crawled forward to seat his spike in Huffer. 

Somewhat dazed, Gears sat up, looking around at the pool of fluids. He licked at the blue on his forearm. “Hey! It’s good! Huffer, you glitch! You said transfluid would probably taste bitter and it doesn’t!” Alternately grumbling and humming with pleasure, Gears toddled off the platform. 

Huffer was in no fit state to respond to any accusations. Prime’s spike filled him so deliciously. He held on to Prime’s faulds, meeting him thrust for thrust, spike and valve – Prime had left his interface array in its reversed position. 

“Not gonna last,” Huffer whimpered, feeling overload building fast. “Short-changed, as usual…” He arched, shuddering, his vocalizer actually shorting before he got more than a squeak out; but Optimus kept pumping and pounding into him, valve massaging every last drop of fluid from Huffer’s spike and squeezing for more, the Prime’s spike remaining hard within Huffer’s spasming, splashing valve. Huffer overloaded again, and again, and a fourth time, helpless, before Optimus gusted a vent of scorching air and filled him to overbrimming. 

Sitting up as Optimus rolled off him, Huffer licked at the flow as the Prime’s spike retracted. “Huh. Not bad, I guess.” He sauntered off the platform, letting his depressurized spike dangle as he sat with Huffer against a wall and tipped into recharge.

Seaspray ascended the platform carrying a bucket of solvent and a fine-wire spun-gold cloth. Optimus recognized him from the first night – the mech representing the West in the circle. He knelt beside the recumbent Prime and began to clean him. It wasn’t that the spilled transfluid was something unclean that needed to be removed, but Seaspray liked the gleam of Optimus’ colors, the vividness of him, especially the cobalt blue. There were no open bodies of water on Cybertron of course, but Seaspray had, before joining the Solian Order, …acquired… ancient, black market datatrax of water planets. There were deepwater lakes and tropical oceans, he knew, with water that blue. He longed for them with all his spark. 

Before the war, the newly chosen Optimus Prime had expressed his desire to repair and reestablish their network of space bridges. Seaspray had surged with hope. If only the Senate hadn’t… If only Megatron hadn’t… Pointless “what if” games. Seaspray dismissed the intrusive thoughts and refocused his attention. The Prime’s spike had extended, gleaming and hard under the soft strokes of goldcloth. Seaspray bent closer, the cloth moving in slower and slower circles as he studied the fascinating whorls and spirals formed by the segments making up the shaft. The emission port at the tip contracted and expanded, beckoning. 

Something warm touched his seals. Seaspray jumped, dropping the cloth, nearly overloading on the spot, and the watching nuns giggled. Prime was reaching between Seaspray’s legs, tugging his hips forward. Seaspray knew he couldn’t last long with Optimus fingering him like this, tracing the thin, overlapping wavelike layers of citrine and turquoise. As Optimus’ forefinger pierced him, slipping inside his valve, Seaspray’s spike leapt from its confinement, splashing lubricant over the Prime’s arm and hip. Prime’s finger moved inside with a gentle, steady rolling motion, his thumb stroking the underside of Seaspray’s throbbing spike. 

Seaspray vented hard, fighting for control, gasping out the first mantra of inner peace. He had better discipline than this! Prime’s finger pushed in deeper, and the other fingers curled upward to join the thumb in lightly petting Seaspray’s spike. Seaspray jerked his hips, unwontedly awkward, and tried to refocus his optics. Optimus was watching intently, his venting uneven and fast, increasing with the tempo of his thrusting finger. Seaspray gave a weak moan and Optimus darted his head down, engulfing his spike with his mouth, sucking and licking, never slackening the pace of his finger in Seaspray’s valve as Seaspray spilled his first small measure of transfluid. 

Optimus helped him to his knees, stroking his back as Seaspray’s venting slowly returned to normal. Seaspray stared at the tip of Prime’s spike, his optics drawn again to the gently pulsing opening. A single droplet of blue quivered there. His head nodded, closer, closer. He wanted to lick it.

With a shudder and a hastily gasped last line of mantra, Seaspray jerked upright, forcing himself to look Optimus in the face. He had a question. Something had been niggling at his mind since watching the Prime take Prowl’s seals. It had been hard to think rationally past the emotionally charged and intensely erotic ritual.

“Where is it all coming from?” Seaspray gestured vaguely around at the pools of blue fluid spilled across and dripping from the platform.

The nuns giggled again, the younger set whooping and calling out basic anatomical suggestions.

“From my transfluid tanks,” Optimus explained patiently, jogging his hips a little so Seaspray could hear the internal slosh. Hot Rod, Blurr and Drift collapsed on each other, laughing.

Seaspray rolled his optics at Hot Rod’s group. “I know, but there’s so much of it! You can’t have drunk enough energon to make up for the fluid loss. Matter doesn’t just appear out of nowhere!”

“Ah.” Optimus nodded. “I believe Primus is…hmm…materializing the fluid directly within me. He has access to more dimensions, more aspects of the universe than we.”

“So, you’re,” Seaspray said thoughtfully, “you’re ejaculating Primus’ transfluid.”

“Mmm. Essentially, yes.”

“He’s literally overloading through you, using your body.”

“Yes.”

Any interface panels that had miraculously been closed now snapped open, and moans echoed around the hall. Ratchet bit his hands. Perceptor slid down with his back to the wall, venting heavily, knees spread, hands kept well clear of his aching interface array. In the observation/shield control room, Prowl and Red Alert turned their chairs opposite and swiftly licked each other to overload, catching their fluid in their mouths because Red didn’t want to risk shorting the equipment. 

Moaning, Seaspray straddled Prime, circling his own hips to help his sopping valve unspiral as he pressed himself onto Prime’s spike, opening enough to engulf the entire length. Prime’s hands slid under his aft, lifting him until Seaspray stood precariously on the tips of his pedes, legs spread not quite painfully wide. Seaspray nearly protested, but as Prime’s hips began to move, all thoughts of taking his own weight were driven from his mind. Lubricant poured from his valve, squirting between the segments of Prime’s spike. Seaspray tried to catch his own spill as he overloaded again, but there was much more of it this time and much of it dripped between his fingers. He brought the rest to his chest, smearing it over his armor. He was countershaded; white on chest and ventrum, on the insides of his arms and legs and the lower half of his face; black everywhere else. Now liberally daubed with silver. Watching him, Optimus’ engine revved, and he bucked up into him harder, thrusting wildly until the geyser erupted. He pulled out, spilling blue-silver, rolling them over to stroke his spike in long sines and spirals over Seaspray’s body, mingling their fluids, continuing to spill until the platform was truly awash, and nothing could be seen of Seaspray’s habitual coloration. 

Prime directed another jet into Seaspray’s valve, filling him to the rims, then knelt over Seaspray’s face, offering. Seaspray lifted his head eagerly, taking as much of the spike as he could, opening his intake to its widest diameter, swallowing and swallowing, everything Prime gave, shuddering with another overload as he continued to drink Primus’ sacred fluid. 

Optimus gave Ratchet a wide-opticked look. 

//He’s got big fuel tanks for his size, actually,// Ratchet assured him. //And I _think_ he has just enough sense left to stop when he’s full.//

Indeed, the next pulse of fluid Seaspray let dribble from the sides of his mouth. Optimus withdrew his spike and settled himself on elbows and knees, covering Seaspray’s body without crushing his lighter frame, tilting his head to claim Seaspray’s mouth in wet, tender kisses.

“There’s more where that came from, dearspark,” Optimus whispered against his audial. “Whenever you want it.” Seaspray clicked weakly, and drifted off to recharge. 

“Now you’re just showing off,” Powerglide said, grinning. And trembling, because he was next. 

Optimus knelt on the platform, hands resting lightly on faulds, as Hound and Beachcomber carried Seaspray away, settling the sated mech near the western wall. His optics were a clear blue, watching the nuns care for one another. 

The little aerobatic jet-glider straightened his wings. He could do this. He was small, but he was fast and maneuverable. He was awesome. He clamped his black armor down to stop his trembling. 

Powerglide, as it turned out, liked it rough, from behind, with growling and biting. His seals had been cinnabar, titanium, aluminum, in angular, swooping shapes that befit his daring personality. When he was finished, he lay on the platform, cheeping dizzily, until Warpath came to help him down. 

The liturgy of deflowerings continued. Skids, whose hands were so steady with a pistol but shook on the Prime’s body, shy and unsure, with seals of lapis and pewter jeweled with ruby and citrine. Blaster’s seals were carnelian, gold, platinum; rich and glowing like his voice; the aching void in his chest where his symbionts would sit when he was older gently filled for a brief time with the pleasure of the Vessel’s touch. Sideswipe and Sunstreaker came up together. Not a branched spark, but frame-brothers; their seals silver and gold, topaz and ruby. Trailbreaker’s seals were onyx, titanium, with a rainbow of cabochons – ruby, carnelian, citrine, emerald, sapphire, amethyst. Cliffjumper’s were rhodocrosite, tungsten, iron; sturdy and straightforward. 

Two of the two-wheelers approached, together as they had been for the trial. Chromia and Elita. Arcee had left the hall, running perimeter, she’d said, but mostly proving she wasn’t welded to her sisters. She maybe a little bit wanted a go with the Prime by herself. It was just as well, Chromia and Elita took the Vessel like an ozone storm. 

They had him flat on his back, Chromia enjoying his mouth on her seals – chrysocolla, sapphire, silver, steel; hot and pliant now from his glossa, aching to be breached – Elita down between his legs, exploring his spike, one hand up his rippling valve. He hummed and slowly writhed, stroking their arms and helms, making it plain that he was enjoying them as well. Curling her fingers around his audials, Chromia tried not to dig her fingertips in, her body coiled steel, focused on the feel of his mouth. With a bitten-off cry she jerked her hips and her spike burst through into the Vessel’s mouth; his glossa piercing her valve seal at the same moment, lapping at the rush of lubricant. She overloaded swift and sharp, but her spike remained fully pressurized. She rolled away from his face with a reassuring pat. She wanted to be where Elita was, now that her equipment was free and in the air. 

Elita gave way, grinning, with only a brief show of reluctance. She crawled up the Prime’s big body, gaze meeting the dark blue optics – he was floating but not completely submerged at the moment. She kissed him, tasting Chromia on his supple lips, in his mouth, then moved to take Chromia’s position, legs wide, panel open. Her seals were interleaved with opal and lepidolite, copper and diamond, thin layers whose combinations gave rise to iridescent optical effects. The Vessel ran his glossa over them, paused in surprise. The diamond panes were transparent, affording him a view of the burgeoning, restless structures behind; the sensor lights in her valve already lit a warm lavender. 

“Diamond? You meditated diamond into your seals? Really?” Chromia leaned over Elita’s shoulder, staring down at her sister’s array.

Elita sighed. “Call me a cynic. After Sentinel I didn’t think we’d find the Bearer in my lifetime.” But they had found the Bearer, and now she realized diamond seals would not be so easy to break, and shards in this area would be problematic at best. Ratchet came up to the platform, all business, frowning at her. She pointed a finger at him. “I don’t want to hear it. You didn’t think we’d find him, either.” 

Ratchet nodded, whatever lecture he’d been about to deliver thoroughly derailed. “Nevertheless, you have created a difficulty.”

Optimus blinked at them, his optics lightening to their normal blue. Without a word he lifted Elita by her hips and set her on her pedes, rearranging himself so that he knelt, folding himself low before her. He extended the sword from his right wrist. 

Mouths dropped open and optics spun wide around the hall, but before Ratchet could shriek in protest, the Prime curled his fingers around the outside rim of her valve seal and made a series of fast, sharp stabs in a hexagonal shape, angled slightly inward. With the last stab he gave a slight prying twist, and the central section of her seal popped out ringing into his hand. He offered it to her and she wordlessly took it, while he splayed his hand around the outside of her valve rim again, carefully cutting the rest of the seal into sections and levering them away from their attachment with the inner rim. She stood very, very still, but the vibrations through the rim were driving her mad, and her valve ran with lubricant, her spike visibly thrashing behind its seal. When the last piece was free, he applied his mouth to her valve, licking and nibbling and sucking all around it to thoroughly clear it of any possible shards, while Elita clutched his helm and overloaded hard; the translucent pane of her spike seal now well-daubed with lubricant and a small amount of transfluid. 

Grinning lopsidedly, Ratchet withdrew, joining Wheeljack and Perceptor in admiring the young Prime’s dexterity and practical thinking. And remarkably sharp, astonishingly hard blade. Diamond-cutter.

Optimus deeply scored but did not pierce her spike seal, and then set to work on her valve with mouth and a carefully inserted fingertip, gently thrusting in span by span, deeper each time, wriggling the tip against her sensor nodes. Panting, Elita rocked her hips, sometimes remembering to stroke his helm, but mostly concentrating on the feel of what he was doing, and the rising heat and charge building deep in her body. She understood what he meant to happen. 

Chromia watched for a moment, then shoved her sister’s feet wider apart so that she could get between them to the Prime’s equipment, her own spike throbbing and untouched temporarily, but not forgotten. She couldn’t fit his spike entirely in her mouth, but she sucked fiercely on the tip, flicking the emission port with her glossa, grinning at his low moan as she did so, and the surge and pulse of the thick shaft in her hands. She spread her knees, angling her hips down, bracing herself with one hand settled deep inside his valve as she began to swirl her spike in the silver and blue fluids decorating the platform. Night might be cooling outside, but in the hall the air, and the slick stone beneath their knees, was warm verging on hot. Chromia drew circles and conjoined loops until she found a pattern she liked and settled in, rubbing herself on the stone, on Primus’ body. 

Above her, Elita arched her back, optics tightly shut, as Optimus fingered her faster, pressing his lips around her spike seal, mouth open and ready. His other hand stroked her thighs, fingertips too big to fit far into seams, but his touches firm enough to send vibration and static down into her endoform even as his finger in her valve curled upward to at last reach the apex and the crown of sensors there. She bared her denta, crying out, and her spike burst through the barrier, into Prime’s mouth. 

He slowed but did not still the motion of his finger inside her, licking her swollen spike with great attention. He drew each piece of her seal from his mouth, placing them reverently in her palm, bending his head to lick her again, finding even the tiniest shard and adding it to the glistening, shimmering pile. He licked her spike and its rim clean, and she came again, and again he licked up every drop of transfluid, humming softly, moaning louder now and then in response to the things Chromia was doing between his legs. 

Elita opened a cache in her left thigh while she could still think, and placed the bright shards of her seals within, closing it firmly. Now the real fun could begin. They had seen many couplings over the days and nights. They had a rather firm idea of the things they wanted from him. They pushed him down, ranging hungrily over his body.

Elita took to kissing him. The young Prime had a sweet mouth, and she liked the feel of his big, blunt hands moving slow and gentle, or keen and fevered on her narrow, angular body, the reverent way he fondled her spike and aft and valve. Chromia grinned, having a good view when she had enough thought to open her optics. But Optimus’ valve fluttered so distractingly around her spike; spiraled down tight around her, hot and slick, her hands braced on the gleaming curves of his spread thighs; she would only reluctantly give up her place. They scribed touches and kisses back and forth over him, exploring him singly and together, caressing each other as they exchanged positions…or combined them. Their two spikes wrestling and striving within his valve sent him shouting into multiple overloads. The two-wheelers, spikes clamped in his writhing valve, clutched each other and him as they poured hot silver into him, hot blue-silver liberally splattering them. 

Starry-eyed, he rolled and tossed beneath them like high-wind-tide on the Rust Sea, their voices and fields and the ringing of their bodies interweaving melodies to shake the steel chandeliers.

Optimus came to himself. Flat on his back on the platform again. The two-wheelers kissed him and caressed his face and – holding each other upright – left the platform. 

At the entrance to the hall, Ultra Magnus had appeared, talking with Prowl, Kup and Perceptor. Optimus glimpsed something tiny fluttering around Prowl’s audials. Almost immediately, Prowl nodded at Ultra Magnus, turned and walked away down the path toward Skyfire’s erstwhile anchorhold. 

Most ground-based mechs had big feet, and big lower legs. It simply had to do with maximizing flexibility in root mode and mass in vehicle mode. Feet and lower legs that were wider than thighs meant that a mech’s hips had to be wide enough for the feet and kibble to clear with an easy stride. And wide hips meant a certain amount of sway, even in the most efficient of gaits. Prowl’s hips moved in smooth loops, like most mechs’ did – so why was Optimus not certain if the sudden hardening of his spike had to do with watching Prowl’s hips or with Ratchet’s hot mouth coming down on his interface array? 

Optimus half sat up, caressing the Mechanica’s helm, surprised by the intensity of Ratchet’s fields. And other things. He could feel the suction on his spike up to his transfluid tank. 

//I needed this,// Ratchet moaned over private comm. He had been uncertain, this past vorn, how much longer he could exist under the celibacy strictures. It seemed a petty thing, but he was a creature whose focus was bodies – bodies in all their wonder and beauty. He wanted to heal them when they were broken, yes, but his core appreciation for them was strong when they were whole. His hands were meant to touch. His body was meant to share. His spark could love under the strictures, but only at a physical distance that was a denial of who and what he was. If Optimus had not proven himself, Ratchet would have gone with him to help the Autobots, leaving the Order. 

//Your resolve and dedication are extraordinary.// Optimus vented hard, glad of comms because all his vocalizer was capable at the moment was moaning. His hand on Ratchet’s helm clutched at the smooth curve of it unsteadily. The things Ratchet was doing…! He had his fingers in Optimus’ valve now, too. So warm, those hands, so warm. Optimus spread his legs wider, curling his hips upward, begging for more, deeper, faster, yes, but mostly _more_... 

//My resolve has more to do with the strength of others than my own,// Ratchet said. He fitted himself to Prime’s spike, pushing through the seal and settling his hips with a grateful sigh. 

// **You give yourself too little credit.** // Primus lifted him slightly, rearranged the Vessel’s interface array. Ratchet, watching avidly, shuddered at the twisting, stroking sensation in his valve, and groaned as his spike popped free of its seal. With only a small angular adjustment, he pushed his spike into the Vessel’s valve, completing the sacred embrace.

The keeping or breaking of his vows was now moot. Ratchet moved on the Prime slow and firm, sinking deep, embracing deeper with each wave. He shuttered his optics, blissfully ignoring the overheating warnings, reveling in the glorious slick slide of parts against parts, and the seep of lubricant. The Vessel pushed a thumb into Ratchet’s mouth and he licked and sucked on it with the same attention he had the spike – the sound of the Prime’s low moans was intoxicating. Ratchet thrust harder, faster, letting his pleasure rise over him, uncontrolled for once, the surge of overload through his body, of transfluid from his spike sweeping his consciousness into dim, half-awake realms, molten heat splashing between them as it coursed from the depths of his body. He fell onto the Prime’s ventrum, gasping.

Slowly, his panting stilled, systems resetting, body cooling slightly. Optimus rolled them over, settling himself over Ratchet, pressing him to the platform though carefully not crushing him. He hadn’t really gotten to kiss Ratchet, hadn’t explored the Mechanica’s sturdy but brilliantly wrought body. He had so wanted Ratchet to kiss him during the trial…

“Optimus…” Ratchet wasn’t sure what he meant to say. His seals were broken. The strictures were done, the initiation satisfied. But what had Ratchet really wanted? Aside from getting the Prime’s armor off, not that that was strictly necessary. He let his hands graze over that vivid armor. If he did have more to say it would again have to be over comms because the Prime seemed to be enjoying having his glossa in Ratchet’s mouth. Big hands roamed his body, finding the warm, sweet places Ratchet had supposed secret. 

Withdrawing – temporarily – from the Mechanica’s mouth, Optimus ran his lips across each black chevron, then along the sulcus of Ratchet’s mid-helm line, tenderly stroking the delicate-looking audial antennae. Ratchet had been kind to him from the beginning, but the underlying (and sometimes not so subtle) current of good humor Optimus had sensed in him before seemed to have dissipated. Optimus returned to caressing Ratchet’s face, nuzzling his mouth open, slipping his glossa inside to stroke and twine with Ratchet’s. 

Optics open, Ratchet saw the shift to starry black. The Vessel looked at him, one hand wandering down to slide a single fingertip into Ratchet’s valve, thrusting, swirling rapidly, hitting all the perfect nodes and bringing on a swift overload, and with it another level of relaxation. The Vessel rolled them again, and Ratchet sprawled across the Prime’s body, content for the moment. 

// **You fear for the safety of those in the Order who will accompany Optimus out into the world.** // He stroked Ratchet’s aft, the backs of his thighs. 

Ratchet spread his legs, feeling his spike twitch. //Yes. I know Optimus wants to protect us, will keep us as safe as he can, but…// 

// **There is death outside the walls of your sanctuary. Violent death. And pain.** // There was no denying this. Primus had slept long, had left the evolution of his children to themselves. Their choice. He had never wanted slaves. His children had powerful bodies, powerful minds – and potent emotions. // **At the moment, with Optimus seemingly missing, his forces have gone to ground. Megatron’s and the Senate’s armies are posturing, maneuvering. There is time for this initiation, for this pleasure.** //

Ratchet lifted his head, meeting Primus’ starry gaze. The hands caressing his thighs moved up and in, fingers brushing the rim of his valve. Primus smiled and Ratchet came, a little climax, but he laughed as he arched his hips into the touch, his own hands clutching at Optimus’ chestplates. Who could argue with a directive like that? 

He caressed the Prime’s face, lingering over the sensitive mouth. Yes, wiser to enjoy this while he could. He would enjoy every milispan of him. //So beautiful,// Ratchet murmured. //So beautiful.// It became a mantra. Ratchet’s mouth and hands worshiped and illuminated every line and curve. Warbuild but so beautifully made; solid, powerful but grace had not been forgotten. Ratchet also had not forgotten that Optimus had not yet climaxed. This wasn’t the trial. Ratchet wanted another taste of that blue godsfluid. 

Optimus stretched and curled under every touch, chuckling, optics flashing briefly to blue. //There’s nothing so remarkable about my frame, Mechanica, except the things inside that the Matrix changed when it chose to lodge in me.//

//So beautiful,// was all Ratchet could say. He clamped his mouth to a neck cable, sucking hard, glossa lashing the cable’s surface, and Optimus’ head fell back, optics flickering, mouth open, moans caught by Wheeljack’s kiss. 

“ **Hello…mmmmm…Wheeljack,** ” Primus hummed when the Vessel’s mouth was freed for a moment. 

“Heh. Ratchet commed he figured you wouldn’t mind handling both of us, considering.”

“ **Mmhmmmm.** ”

Wheeljack squirmed. Ratchet was working his way down the Prime’s body again, lingering over all those nice, shapely ventrum plates. //Look, uh…my seals are just about done for. You might as well…//His hips were grasped, his interface array moved firmly over Optimus’ mouth, lips and glossa working on his seals – titanium white, emerald, carnelian, a complicated, recursive, angular pattern ringed in blue – while Wheeljack watched Ratchet draw the Prime’s spike deeply into his mouth. 

“Oh Primus!” Wheeljack squirmed, grinding his hips down. Glossa pierced him, his spike jutted free, spattering the Prime’s chest with a few drops of silver. Still fully hard, he let Prime move him, alter the angle of his hips, and his spike was taken into Prime’s hot mouth. Ratchet was working hard down there at the other end, one arm pumping, in synch with the bobbing of his head; Optimus moaned around Wheeljack’s spike, body rippling between them, the hands on Wheeljack’s hips gripping tight. Wheeljack wanted to thrust but he was held, and oh Primus that glossa! Those moans! Vibrating though him. He arched, then fell forward, hands splaying, fingerling tentacles extending, slipping between plates even as one of Prime’s hands shifted to thrust a finger into Wheeljack’s twitching, rippling valve.

Wheeljack cried out, surging hard, astonished by the power of it as static rolled off his head-fins and his body thrashed helplessly, a thick jolt of transfluid pouring into Prime’s mouth, hungrily swallowed. The grip on his hips eased – Ratchet had gotten more than a mouthful down there, but by the way he was licking he was enjoying it – and Wheeljack rocked his hips, riding the waves of his climax down to stillness. He pulled free, leaning back, still turned on by the view. The Vessel hummed, smiling, gently petting Wheeljack’s thighs. 

Maybe Ratchet wouldn’t mind scooting over? Or switching? Wheeljack retracted half of his fingerlings, trailing the other half over Optimus’ body as he crawled down to join Ratchet between the Prime’s legs. 

“Yes,” Ratchet murmured, shifting out of the way, but giving Wheeljack a one-armed hug as he did so. He licked the tip of Prime’s spike, fast and neat, then sat up, grinning at the wanton, wanting look on Wheeljack’s face. “Yes, wrap your valve around that, my friend.”

Wheeljack straddled Prime’s hips, canting his own hips forward. Ratchet cupped Wheeljack’s aft with one hand and guided Prime’s spike inside Wheeljack’s valve with the other. So hot, to see his hands so close to another nun’s array, to have his hands on another’s body in something so very much other than a medical capacity. As Wheeljack bore down, filling himself, moaning appreciatively, Ratchet watched, panting as hard as if it was his own valve unspiralling to take in the Prime’s girth. The tip of Wheeljack’s spike peeked from its housing. 

“Jack…?”

“Ahh…aaaahhh…” Wheeljack rode hard, twisting on Prime’s spike, faster and faster as Prime wriggled inside him, lashing the nodes at the very apex of his valve. “Aaahh frag, Ratch…don’t pretend you…aaah aaah aah frag… you ain’t been wanting… to get your hands on…someone…for vorns… ah frag ah frag…” Jack leaned back slightly, giving Ratchet and the others watching a clearer view as his spike slowly repressurized, extending and bouncing with his fevered motion. 

Ratchet placed a hand flat against Wheeljack’s ventrum, moving it in leisurely circles, winding ever lower. Lubricant dripped from the tip of Jack’s spike. Ratchet was hard again, too, but was willing to ignore that for the moment. Primus wasn’t. A big, warm hand enveloped Ratchet’s spike, squeezing gently but otherwise still, allowing Ratchet the measure of concentration he needed to direct at Wheeljack. Lower, lower, Ratchet moved his hand, black against Wheelajck’s white armor, lower, toward that bobbing spike gleaming with lubricant. 

He touched it. Wheeljack gasped, his litany of moans stuttering for a moment. Going with the motion, stroking along the top. Ratchet caressed every segment, every whorl, shaft and tip and shaft again. His own spike throbbed in Prime’s hand. 

Wheeljack’s head fell back, his hips straining. “Aah! Aah! I’m going to…”

Ratchet stroked the shaft one last time then cupped his hand around the tip. The spray of transfluid was hot against his palm, spurting between the fine plates to the sensitive endoform beneath, silver bright dripping through his black fingers and down onto Optimus’ blue and steel armor. Prime’s hand moved on Ratchet’s spike before Wheeljack’s climax had faded, the thumb swiping firmly over the tip, adding Ratchet’s silver to the mix. Wheeljack dabbled his fingers in it, mingling their fluids further, smearing them on Ratchet’s hand as Ratchet followed suit. Wheeljack gasped and jerked forward – Primus filling him from below, blue squirting from between them. 

Ratchet pushed Wheeljack back slightly again so he could get his mouth down there, licking avidly at the blue, lapping at the base of Prime’s spike where it emerged from Wheeljack’s stretched valve, lapping at Wheeljack’s valve, and the space between valve and spike housing. Jack came again, valve clenching hard, though his hands on Ratchet’s helm remained gentle. Ratchet licked everything, humming contentedly. 

At last Wheeljack lifted himself off Prime’s spike, shaky on his legs. Ratchet stood with him and they embraced each other, long friends despite some occasional conflicts of personality. 

“Better?” Jack whispered, hugging Ratchet and kissing the side of his helm. 

“Oh, stick it in neutral,” Ratchet grumbled. He patted Wheeljack’s well-fondled aft. “Come on, before Perceptor’s pumps give out.” He smiled though, and Wheeljack chuckled, both of them waving the scientist up onto the platform as they helped each other off. Most of their fellow nuns had now been initiated; there were plenty of other bodies to explore and enjoy. The hall was filled with the echoes of soft moans and sparkfelt endearments long withheld, now freely given. Jazz and Smokescreen were not the only ones still making love. 

Optimus stood, holding out a hand, optics shifting from black to blue.

Perceptor’s optics flicked once toward a certain young scout, then resolutely remained on Prime. His shoulders, though, were set at a slight cant, as though it was taking a great deal of determination not to look back. Unlike the Trial, here Perceptor hesitated. Thoughts whirled almost visibly across his handsome face. He nodded very slightly to himself, decided, and laid a hand softly against Optimus’ cheek. He intended to display in this initiation the kind of lover he wanted to be.

Tall as Perceptor was, Optimus had only to stoop slightly to kiss him, to wrap his arms around his torso. He found he liked the faceted solidity of Perceptor’s chest, and the gleaming, transparent plate there that lent another layer of complexity to his mostly black but star- and symbol-etched armor. 

“Mmmmmmmmmm…” Optimus hummed. Perceptor’s glossa licked against his, active, probing, inquisitive. The taste of fresh energon suffused their mouths – the telescope had prudently refueled. Perceptor’s hands explored his body, intent and unhurried, lingering wherever touch elicited pleasured response. For the moment, Optimus contented himself with stroking Perceptor’s back and sides, venturing no farther down than his waist. That scope enticed investigation, though. 

Lifting one hand from the small of Perceptor’s back, he stroked along the barrel, letting his fingers ride up and over the attachment pivot. Perceptor shivered and purred, but – delight! – kept on kissing him. Optimus traced the protective frame around the caudal lens, careful not to touch the lens itself. Perceptor gasped, writhing against him, cooling systems roaring to life. The feel of Perceptor’s body against his sent his own core temperature mounting. His spike twitched interestedly in its housing.

He drew Perceptor down, covering him, blue-eyed, blue-eyed, for if the stars appeared what would the telescope do? Their legs twined. Perceptor’s head and part of his scope rested on Optimus’ forearm, their mouths gently locked in wet conjunction. Prime’s fields spread outward, encompassing the hall, blissful and soothing, contented. Whirring fans and revving engines around them quieted, sighing. A few nuns dropped off into recharge, snuggled together along the walls. Only the slow, inescapable rising heat between Perceptor’s legs gave indication that this serenity would not last well into the next vorn. (And only Bumblebee watched with unquiet body and spark, door wings high and quivering, a fierce longing he had never dared put words to piercing him.)

Optimus moved his free hand slowly, down Perceptor’s chest…down his narrow ventrum…lower, lower, making his intention plain. Perceptor’s interface panel opened just as Optimus’ fingers brushed its upper margin. 

“Oh,” Perceptor whispered. “Ohhhh…” He lifted his hips, rocking a little into Optimus’ hand. In meditation, Perceptor often touched his seals, skirting the edge, getting close to but never breaking them. Little gasps and twitches escaped him as Optimus’ fingers circled from valve seal to spike seal and back. Optimus lightened his stroking, watching Perceptor’s face, bending to kiss him now and then for the sheer pleasure of slipping his glossa between those parted lips. Perceptor seemed to settle again, optics unfocused, or focused within. His body and engine ran hot against Optimus’ plating, but he lay motionless and silent but for long, deep, even venting. Had he fallen into meditation? 

Perceptor blinked, consciousness settling back into a more normal state as Optimus kissed along his jaw, then turned his head to nibble gently at Perceptor’s throat cables. Astonishing how very different another’s mouth was from one’s own hands! Perceptor blinked again, optics widening as the kisses trailed across his chest, along the edges of his adamant breastplate, winding back and forth, wandering over his ventrum. He moaned, stroking Optimus’ helm and shoulders, grasping at the edges of armor plates. Heat pounded him from within, more powerfully than during all these days and nights of watching. Panting, he sat up somewhat, braced on one elbow as Optimus pushed his thighs apart, wrapping his big arms around a hip and a leg, settling with a satisfied hum into kissing and licking Perceptor’s seals. Rich red garnet complexly interleaved with vivid teal apatite and star enstatite, laced with fractals of chrome and gold; the blue Primus-ring pattern was whorled and repeated, reaching inward toward the center of each seal. Perceptor had overloaded many times, watching the trial and the subsequent initiations. 

Moaning, Perceptor curled his hips upward, head falling back. Optimus licked more delicately; he could feel how thin and pliant the seals had become, as though Perceptor had just now meditated them that way, aching for them to be broken. He hummed deep in his range, flicking ancient glyphs across their surfaces, holding Perceptor’s hips down firmly as the tall nun writhed. That spike seal would not last. 

//Wait…// Perceptor private commed. He gently pushed Optimus’ head away, drawing the Prime up, full length along his body. //Kiss me,// he explained. //Use your hands on my seals.// 

//Yes please!// Optimus agreed. He liked this mech! He hummed happily as their lips found each other, opening, glossas pressing and stroking feverishly as though they were beloveds kept apart for megavorns. He slipped a hand between Perceptor’s legs, delicately tracing the seals’ outer rims, fingertips stroking in tempo with his glossa, giving Perceptor the ghostly feel of being licked and kissed at the same time. One fingertip spiraled inward to the center of the valve seal.

Perceptor wrapped his arms around Optimus’ neck. Their optics met and held. As Optimus slowly pressed his finger in, they watched each other’s faces, feeling and watching the exact moment when the seal was breached; Perceptor’s optics widening, lips parting, heat blooming through his body, radiating outward in his fields; Optimus taking in as a gift every subtle expression and tiny gasp. Their gazes remained locked as Optimus pushed in deeper, gently brushing newly awakened sensor nodes, and Perceptor arched into him, venting hard, optics wide and bright, watching Optimus’ wonder and pleasure-filled face. Connected by sight and touch, their fields meshing, synchronizing. 

In. Out. In. Out. Optimus rubbed his finger in slow circles. Perceptor’s valve was slightly oval in cross-section rather than the usual perfect circle; a common enough variation among particularly narrow-hipped mechs – Perceptor carried much of his lower leg mass laterally rather than medially. The fit to a spike would be tight, but Perceptor was very wet already. Optimus pushed in until his finger was buried, pulling upward slightly to stimulate the vault nodes. Perceptor moaned and curled his hips up into his hand. Optimus could feel the tenting of the spike about to break free against his palm. Withdrawing his now thoroughly lubed finger, he circled the spike seal, wetting its surface, feeling every micro-thin plate of garnet, every slender line of gold. His own spike felt incredibly hard and hot, dripping and aching to be buried in Perceptor’s valve. 

He watched Perceptor’s face, finger circling, circling, barely touching the seal. He let his other fingers brush the valve rims at the bottom of each orbit, the tips just poking inside, gaining their own sheen of lubricant. Unable to resist those parted lips, he dipped his head to thrust his glossa deep into Perceptor’s mouth, the way he wanted so badly to thrust his spike into Perceptor’s valve. He pulled back, watching Perceptor’s face, so aroused, so sweetly breathless, closing in on itself a little as Optimus rubbed the convex center of the seal harder, curling his hand around so that Perceptor cried out and the spike sprang free into his grip, long and wet and slender, pulsing with a thin jet of Perceptor’s first external ejaculation. Optimus pumped his hand up and down the shaft, coaxing a few more spurts. 

The tip was sleekly encased in pure, highly conductive copper. It would be exquisitely sensitive; Optimus was looking forward to getting his mouth on it. But this was about what Perceptor wanted. Optimus smiled, and reversed his interface array, poising himself over that waving spike, that clenching, glistening valve. No, he could not draw this out. His spike strained downward, pulling his hips with it, sinking into that hot, wet little valve, tight, at the inner rim, which only made his spike expand more inside as Perceptor thrashed under him, climaxing yet again as his long virgin spike arrowed into Prime’s valve, hitting the apex easily, struggling deliriously in the powerful grip of Optimus’ inner mesh. 

Optimus did not thrust at first, settling himself firmly until their rims met, chiming softly. Perceptor, venting raggedly, caressed his face, mouth open and begging for more kisses even as his valve twitched hungrily around Prime’s spike.

Mouths clasped, hands clasped, they rolled their hips, long and slow, their bodies sinuous as a pair of circuit-eels coiling together to cube their stunning charge. From the outside Vessel and nun hardly seemed to move, the true rigors of their passion revealed in hitching vents – and wildly coruscating fields. Primus took him, optics shut, drawing the feel and sound and scent of the scientist into the core of the planet, and then released him, letting Optimus enjoy Perceptor fully. 

Moaning, Optimus began to thrust faster, hips rising and falling in a steady sine, filling Perceptor utterly with each inward bow. His legs were spread so that the nuns behind them could see their joining, aroused further even amid their own lovemaking. Springer pounded harder into Trailbreaker. Sideswipe sucked harder on Kup’s spike while his own valve was wantonly taken by his frame-brother. All of them watching Prime’s bright silver spike stretch Perceptor’s wet little valve. 

Beachcomber was watching, too, unopened as yet, his hands and feet pressed flat against the corundum of the hall’s wall and floor. He and Perceptor had both come from the Science Academy, had been friends, had come to the Order together. If there was anyone in particular that Beachcomber wanted to share the rites of pleasure with (and, really, he wanted to share them with _everyone_ ), it was Perceptor. Seismic waves of slow overload washed through Beachcomber, watching his friend’s intimate parts lovingly revealed, listening to his friend’s impassioned gasps and cries. 

Faster. Vents hissing between his denta, Optimus plunged on, rocking Perceptor’s body with the force of his thrusts. Perceptor wrapped his long legs around Optimus’ waist, pulling him in, meeting him more than halfway, helm thrown back, mouth open wide. Optimus buried his face in the hollow of Perceptor’s shoulder, back arched sharply, a shout building in his spark, valve and spike squeezing and thrashing fiercely. “ _Harder…_ ” they both gasped as one. 

Charge slammed through them, blue lightning flashing and coiling from their high points, their bodies jerking, locking together, buried in each other: field, metal and mind. Silver transfluid gushed and spurted, mingling with glowing blue, drenching them, pooling across the platform. They lay entwined, panting, unmoving, optics shuttered.

At last Optimus lifted his weight, though Perceptor was sturdy enough. He crawled down Perceptor’s lean body, dropping kisses here and there as Perceptor tried to muster the energy to shiver. Humming softly, Optimus set to licking and sucking the fluid from Perceptor’s plating, leaving no seam unexplored. Yes, there…that long spike extended again above the valve brimming full of blue godsfluid. Optimus sipped at the valve, swallowing Primus’ emission thirstily, sucking hard to get to more – Perceptor writhed and cried out, scrabbling at the platform, pushing his groin upward into Prime’s mouth. 

“Yes,” Prime chuckled, lapping deeper. “Squeeze your valve tight.” He thrust his glossa into the pucker created by the inner mesh as Perceptor spiraled it nearly closed, godsfluid welling up and overflowing, running down his aft, the rivulets pursued by Optimus’ glossa. Leisurely he licked and nuzzled his way back up, fingering Perceptor’s valve slowly to encourage it to relax, kissing around the base of the spike, then drawing his glossa up its length sharply to flick against the tip before taking the whole of it into his mouth, settling down with a deeply satisfied purr. 

Perceptor curled his hands around Prime’s helm, petting and stroking sensitive audials and thick neck cables. Prime hummed appreciatively; he liked being touched and petted as he sucked someone off. Head bobbing relentlessly on Perceptor’s spike, Optimus maneuvered his lower half to his knees, aft in the air; his spike still hard and throbbing. He wasn’t sure how long he could keep himself from pinning the scientist’s neat little valve again, even as delicious as his copper-tipped spike was. 

His hips jinked slightly as a hot mouth suddenly engulfed him. Ratchet had slipped up onto the platform to ease the Prime’s ache, and for another taste of godsfluid. Optimus obligingly came, moaning around Perceptor’s spike, knowing the sound went through it and up into Perceptor’s body, making the scientist writhe and thrust helplessly. 

Pleased, Ratchet withdrew and made a circuit of the hall, stroking himself but keeping sharp optics on the uninitiated, and watching the initiated as they found their own ways to pleasure with each other, now and then stopping to offer a suggestion or help out if someone fumbled or couldn’t find the right angle. Until finally Elita and Chromia tackled him and fragged him senseless. 

Springer considered going up there, too, to stick his spike in Prime’s dripping, lonely-looking valve; but Trailbreaker seemed intent on sucking him dry, which Springer had no objection to, he found. And then Moonracer came up and straddled Springer’s face, and he forgot a lot of things for a while. 

With just the tip in his mouth, lashed by his glossa, Optimus played his hands up and down Perceptor’s length, dipping into his valve now and then, but rubbing and squeezing the shaft faster and faster. 

Before climaxing, though, Perceptor again directed Optimus gently off, scooting out from under, pushing the Prime down onto his back, kissing him soundly all the way down. He wanted to give his transfluid tank a little more time to refill, to give his body and his arousal time to cool and ease, to draw out these sensations, this pleasure. There was more that he wanted from this Prime, and now was a perfect time. 

Now it was Perceptor’s turn to kiss and caress and hum and lick and explore his way down Optimus’ body, hands and mouth busy, slurping noisily when he reached valve and spike, making Optimus groan with the unexpected primalness of it. 

Bumblebee hugged himself tight, to keep himself from doing something…embarrassing. He couldn’t take his optics off Perceptor’s spike, curving gracefully between Perceptor’s legs. Of all the initiations he had been watching, Bee had never seen a spike that long. Skyfire’s was bigger than anyone else’s of course, but it was about the same proportion as Prime’s, given the size of the rest of his body. Perceptor’s spike, if it was let to dangle limp out of its housing, might just about reach Perceptor’s knees. And that copper tip! Bee wanted to know what that tasted like. 

Perceptor looked right at him. Neatly licking the tip of Prime’s spike, Perceptor was watching Bee, the subtle flick of lenses behind his optic panes betraying the shift of spectra – Perceptor could see the heat flaring behind Bee’s interface panel. 

Hot Rod, Blurr and Drift looked at each other, slow grins spreading across their faces. Blurr gave Bumblebee a little push. Bee stumbled forward, caught Perceptor’s hand, was pulled into a hug. 

//Did you think me unaware of your regard?// Perceptor asked over private comm, nuzzling Bee’s helm. 

//I guess not,// Bee said, tipping his face up, their lips bare spans apart. //Not that we could have done anything about it, before.// Perceptor’s spike was touching his ventrum, pressed between their bodies, was touching Bee’s interface panel…his panel snapped open. 

“Mm. Indeed,” Perceptor murmured. 

Bee found himself turned, rearranged by the larger mechs, so that he straddled the Prime’s hips, his back nestled against Perceptor’s front. His chin was cupped by a large hand, and tilted farther up. He reset his optics. Oh, yes. The Vessel properly got first kiss. And seals. Bee wriggled, eager. Perceptor was so hot behind him…

Optimus, optics flashing starry black for a swift, merry second, pulled Bee against his chest, bending his head to kiss him. A light touch of lips, a tilt the other way, another light touch – then Bee’s mouth was open, hungry, small whimpers escaping the scout’s vocalizer as their glossas met and twined. Optimus’ arms were warm and strong around him, hands gentle but firm. 

“Would you like fingers, too, Bumblebee?” Optimus whispered, smiling.

“Yes!” Bee sat up and spread his legs wide, canting his hips forward, almost buzzing with eagerness. He was so hot behind his seals, he wanted them open so badly! Perceptor wrapped his arms around Bee’s chest, pulling him back to rest against him, kissing the side of his helm, his shoulders, his neck, as Prime’s hands moved slowly, inexorably up Bee’s thighs. 

Bee wriggled, scooting his hips farther and farther forward. Prime chuckled softly and pushed him back a little, more firmly into Perceptor’s embrace. He circled the seal rims with his thumbs. Bright hexagonal patterns of citrine and topaz and onyx, ringed with blue, laced with silver. 

“In,” Bee moaned, thrusting at Prime’s hands. “In… Just…just…please, oh, I just want…” His spike seal was well tented now anyway; it wouldn’t take much. 

“As you wish, brave one.” Optimus rubbed the valve seal with his thumb, pressing harder and harder until the thin metal and mineral panes split, spilling a gush of lubricant and revealing golden sensor lights already bright inside. Inserting a forefinger this time, Optimus sleeked the seal remnants against the valve walls, stroking the inner sensors, swirling the lubricant all the way around. Bee moaned and arched in Perceptor’s arms, and his spike sprang free, glistening. Optimus fondled it, appreciating how it was thick at the base, tapering to an almost delicate tip, nicely segmented and whorled. It hardened even more under his caresses, revealing tiny bands of gold inlay between major segments. Subtle but lovely. 

“It’s beautiful,” Perceptor whispered, petting Bee’s ventrum. Bee purred, placing his hands over Perceptor’s, bringing them slowly up his chest, up to his mouth so he could suck and lick those clever, dexterous fingers. Perceptor shivered, his turn to purr and shutter his optics. Bee could feel Perceptor’s spike straining and hot behind him, brushing his aft. He leaned forward, suddenly desperate for Perceptor to be in him.

“Perceptor…” Bee moaned, bowing even farther over, wiggling and circling his aft as Perceptor stroked it, fingertips just brushing Bee’s wet valve rim. Bee would never forget the lovely little stuttering gasps Perceptor made as he slowly pushed his spike inside Bee’s valve, filling Bee as Perceptor was filled from below by Prime. Perceptor’s spike was in his valve! Oh Primus! He tried to buck up, to thrust himself harder onto it, but Perceptor was reaching around, oh Primus, Perceptor was touching Bee’s spike now, fondling it, stroking it, fingers circling the rather pointy tip as small droplets of fluid gathered there, bright scented…then grasping it, directing it down, curving down into…into Prime’s waiting valve! Shuddering, Bee flattened himself on Prime’s body, optics shuttered tight. His spike…his spike was inside Prime, so hot, so wet, and that valve _moved_ , grasping him, pulling him deeper, and at the same time his own valve was open wide, full of Perceptor’s – brilliant, beautiful, kind Perceptor, whom Bee had tried so hard not to think about for so long – hard spike, slowly roiling inside him, touching him completely, lovingly, and it was so obvious from his fields and his panting that Perceptor was as enraptured as he was, had been waiting as long, wanting as long.

//Oh Bee…Oh Bee…// Perceptor’s hands moved over Bee’s body, trembling with desire, fingers delicately dipping into the door wing attachments, making Bee shiver and his valve clench, which sent a paroxysm through Perceptor’s body in turn; then stroking downward, hands settling on Bee’s hips. //I have so..wanted this…// Rolling his hips, Perceptor slowly began to thrust. 

Bee shivered, aft high, feeling as though he couldn’t move – he didn’t want to move, not while Perceptor was doing this amazing thing – as Perceptor slid in and out, strokes even and sure, Bee’s valve spiraled tight on his length. Optimus remained motionless beneath them, though his spike and valve gave little twitches and tremors now and then as he hummed his own easy pleasure at watching them. 

Perceptor leaned back, entranced by the lovely curves of Bee’s lifted aft, and of his spike sliding in and out of Bee’s wet, hot tightness. After only a few strokes he felt Bee climax, the scout’s low cries abruptly ceasing as he clenched and arched, valve clamping down surprisingly hard on Perceptor’s spike. Perceptor vented deeply to keep himself from following right away. In and out, slow and steady, feeling the slide of Prime’s big spike inside himself, too, knowing that his thrusts were driving Bee’s spike into Prime; a trinity embrace. 

Bee fell limp across Prime’s chest, venting blissfully hard, keenly aware of Perceptor and Optimus’ hands tracing looping sigils over his body, their fingers now and then brushing across each other’s hands, sending sharp, sweet jolts of pleasure through their fields – and his. He wondered if they were gazing into each other’s optics now, over his head, as they had been before. He had liked that, seeing how connected it made them. He wanted to do that with Perceptor, too. Perceptor’s optics were extraordinary; it wasn’t just in his tele- or microscope modes that he saw things with preternatural clarity. 

But Perceptor’s hands on him felt good, too. Perceptor’s spike moving in him felt _wonderful_. Prime’s engine purred softly beneath his cheek plate. 

// **Would you like him to come inside you?** //

Bee lifted his head. Primus winked. Glancing back over his shoulder, Bee saw where Perceptor’s hot gaze was in fact directed, and it wasn’t on the Vessel. Bee, panting, spike twitching, stared unashamed into the starry black. //Yes!//

// **Ripple your valve around him. Think of what you would do to his spike with your glossa.** //

Bee moaned, wanting to do _that_ , too. He felt his valve squeeze, uncoordinated at first, though the surprised gasp from Perceptor indicated this was not unpleasant. Perceptor thrust faster, and Bee had to remind himself of what he intended to do. Primus was doing something with the Vessel’s spike, Bee guessed, given the way Perceptor was riding, hips gyring, head suddenly thrown back, baring graceful neck struts Bee was determined to stroke and kiss later. 

// **Bear down as he thrusts in and draw up as he withdraws,** // Primus directed, grinning. Both the mechs atop him were making such beautiful little noises.

Perceptor grabbed Bee’s hips, bowing over him, his vents blowing hot air over the narrow space between the scout’s door-wings, optics flickering, pushing hard into Bee until their rims chimed, pulling out with jagged vents before driving in again. 

// **He’s close,** // Primus whispered, and Bee came, writhing, filling the Vessel’s valve with the entire contents of his transfluid tank at once, spilling, spilling, hot and silver, splashing wet over their hips and legs and onto the platform as Perceptor pounded on wildly in abandon, giving a low cry as he too at last spilled. Bee gasped at the feel of hot fluid coursing into him, seeping along his valve walls to trickle down the underside of his spike and into the Vessel’s valve. 

The Vessel rolled them, even before their paroxysms faded, dexterously maneuvering, laying them gently on the stone, his spike jutting in the air as he knelt, spread-kneed before them, ejaculating continuously to mark their bodies with silver-blue. They lunged at him with the same idea, sucking and licking his spike, kissing each other around mouthfuls of his fluids, their fingers all the while busy in each other’s valves. Primus caressed their helms and shoulders, rolling the Vessel’s hips in slow circles, enjoying this so much, loving how much they loved each other, how eagerly they sipped at him and each other, so good, so fine – and the Vessel’s optics lightened to blue and Optimus moaned, coming hard into their mouths, wanting to pull them up for sloppy kisses but aching for them to remain where they were. His spike throbbed and pulsed, moving in the grasp of their hands and mouths, and they took turns swallowing great gulping mouthfuls of godsfluid, watching each other’s lips and throats with hungry stares. 

At last, their intake tanks full, Bee and Perceptor began to slow their caresses. Reluctant as they were to leave their Prime, their longing for each other had not abated. Optimus bent and got his kisses, hugging them but pressing them together, and Perceptor led Bee from the platform with one hand gently wrapped around the scout’s spike. They did not get far before sinking to the floor in each other’s arms. 

Hot Rod was just about to saunter up to the platform when Prowl rushed in, carrying a large cylinder of energon. 

“He’s not…” Hot Rod began, but stopped, letting his raised hand fall to his side. Instead of brushing Prowl away with assurances that Ratchet had scanned the Prime and pronounced him fit to continue, that Primus was taking good care of his Vessel’s frame, Roddy took a knee and waited. Prowl’s expression had been…

Not distraught, exactly. Too strong a word. Or maybe that worried face was what distraught looked like on Prowl, Roddy didn’t know. Prowl cupped the back of Optimus’ helm as he drank the energon, wordlessly encouraged him to drink all of it, collected the empty container and gazed intently into Prime’s optics. It was kind of cute. Even more cute was the soppy way Optimus was gazing right back. Hot Rod grinned. 

“Plenty of energy for my turn,” he said, as Prowl stepped away. “Good. He’ll need it.”

Prowl only cocked an eyebrow at him at first, then he half-smiled…which slid into almost a smirk as he passed Hot Rod and left the hall without a word. Smug glitch. Prowl of course knew about Roddy’s ventures onto the roofs of the sanctuary; Prowl thought he was going to be Magnus some day, everyone knew that. Roddy bared his denta. They’d see about that when the time came. Not for megavorns, probably. Ultra, unfortunately, wasn’t that old. 

A soft chuckle brought Hot Rod’s attention back to the here and now. Optimus knelt on the platform, hands on knees, spike retracted but panel open, waiting for him. 

Each initiation was like the first, for Optimus; his systems, his arousal resetting, ready, desirous as if this were a first time for him as it was for them, but without losing his knowledge of all those previous, and his lovers both as Orion Pax and – the very few – once he had become Prime. Each seal a precious beauty tucked away in his memory core. Each body discovered a new treasure. 

Hot Rod looked around as he rose and stepped up onto the platform, making sure of his audience. He extended a hand, reaching for Prime, grinning back at Drift and Blurr. Blurr’s suddenly wide optics were not quite enough warning. 

The Vessel caught the fingers with his mouth, drawing glyphs on the pads with his glossa, sucking them in, setting his denta on metal, pulling Roddy closer. The optics Hot Rod gazed into burned black, glittering with galaxies. 

// **Young one,** // Primus said, // **I know what rests hidden between your legs.** // Big hands moved all over Hot Rod’s body, lingering over sensitive points, then cupping his aft and upper thighs, spreading his legs, lifting him. That gentle mouth kissed his open, glossa licking inward, hot and wet. // **Optimus is going to thoroughly enjoy you. And so am I.** // 

Hot Rod squirmed, delighted and delightful, moaning into the kiss, liking the feel of the hands on his aft, cupping, squeezing, shifting their grip, fingertips now and then sneaking and slipping up between his legs, brushing near the edge of his interface panel. Clever come-ons and sassy lines slipped unnoticed from his mind as he lost himself in the kiss, the hands, the revving of their engines, the mingling of their fields. It had been one thing, teasing the Prime during the trial, but now the Vessel could reciprocate – and Primus knew how to play a mech’s body like the exquisitely complex instrument it was. An instrument of shared joy and pleasure, expressing the love of life throughout the universe. Hot Rod’s panel opened, and he rubbed his seals against the Vessel’s ventrum, writhing in his embrace, venting hard already.

// **So eager,** // Primus said, pleased. He fingered the seals, grazing lightly over the fine, angular patterns of gold, alexandrite, fuchsite, laced with iridium and the blue circle of the trial. He inscribed kisses down the young nun’s wriggling body, knowing how much Optimus enjoyed it, down the narrow ventrum, the sleek hips, to lick delicately, fervently, worshipfully at the delicious, beautiful seals. 

Hot Rod grasped Optimus’ helm, ungentle in his excitement, but Optimus didn’t mind, rubbing the tip of his glossa harder over the bulging spike seal. 

“ **Would you like to show everyone your spike?** ” Primus asked. “ **Show them how beautiful it is?** ” Lifted and turned to face outward, Hot Rod spread his legs wide over the Prime’s lap, canting his hips forward, feeling that big engine rumbling through his spoiler, through his back, his own chest, his spark, waves of energy pulsing fierce and hot. The Vessel’s fingers continued to tease around his spike seal, circling the outer rim, tracing a glyph over the center then circling, encouraging Hot Rod with a slow roll of the Vessel’s hips to thrust into the air, against the languidly circling fingers. 

Gasping, head thrown back to expose throat cables the Vessel dipped his head to nuzzle, Hot Rod bucked and gyred, and Primus rubbed harder, sliding the Vessel’s other hand down to toy with the rim of the valve seal as Hot Rod clutched at those heavy red arms and shuddered into a strong, internal overload. The touches on his seals gentled as he shivered, calming slightly. 

//I do have some control,// Hot Rod said, grinning. His spike pressed hard against its confining seal, but it had not burst through. Not yet. An odd sort of…slipperiness filled him, though, fluid in his valve, and around his spike, hotter and fuller than he’d ever felt them during meditation.

// **Indeed, sweetspark. Maintain your control or abandon it, as it pleases you.** // The Vessel’s fingers continued to stroke in slow arabesques and arcs, sometimes fanning out to smooth down Hot Rod’s inner thighs, putting the bright, vibrant seals on display, incandescent in infrared. 

Hot Rod wriggled. He’d been watching those hands stroking others’ spikes; he desperately wanted them to touch his own. The thought of how it must feel…he would find out very soon. He looked up and caught the transition – the optics shifting from black to blue; Primus receding slightly, letting Optimus come to the fore. Optimus’ spike extended, jutting between Hot Rod’s spread legs, and the fingers on the nun’s seals stilled for a moment as the hips behind him snapped forward. Optimus was hard for him. The young Prime wanted him, wanted to frag him. Was going to frag him, up here in front of everyone. Hot Rod made an inarticulate sound and his spike pushed free, spattering the platform with lubricant swirled with lines of silver from his confined overload a moment ago. 

“Ah,” Optimus murmured. “Stellate.” Hot Rod’s spike was longitudinally ridged from base to tip – star-like in cross-section – edged in gold, the tip a bright crimson shading gradually to platinum at the base. The watching nuns – and there were many of them, even with most of them being occupied – hummed and revved and whirred with interest and appreciation. No one else among them had such a spike. Optimus ran his fingers along the fluid-slicked valleys between the ridges, up and down as Hot Rod cried out and arched into him, then traced the gold-limned ridges; humming with pleasure as Hot Rod shouted in overload, silver arcing from the tip of his spike. Usually Seekers had stellate spikes. Optimus wondered if Hot Rod’s spoiler was more than it seemed. He got nothing but amusement from Primus; if Hot Rod had secrets he wished kept so, Primus would not divulge them.

Smiling, Optimus laid Hot Rod’s momentarily limp body on the platform, settling himself purring between the nun’s legs to happily take that vivid spike into his mouth. Sucking and lapping, enjoying the taste of fluids and the seal remnants. He let his fingers wander, finding seams in Hot Rod’s armor, circling the intact valve seal now and then, straying again over the nun’s ventrum and back, aft and legs. Roddy’s spike pulsed, fully erect inside Prime’s mouth, twitching and sometimes coiling in uncoordinated desire as it was stroked and explored by Prime’s glossa. Prime applied suction as Hot Rod’s gasps grew louder, slowly increasing the draw, thumb pressing more and more firmly around the valve seal. 

Roddy came and Prime drank him with pleasure, but the valve seal remained firm and intact. Optimus let Roddy’s spike slide free of his mouth, stroking it gently upward against Hot Rod’s ventrum with one hand, to better peer at the unbroken seal.

“Hmmmm, what’s this?” Optimus pushed Hot Rod’s spike up a little more, pushed his legs further apart, stroked the valve seal decisively. There was a vertical ridge down the center, underneath the seal, the pliant metal film giving only a hint of the shape beneath. Hot Rod’s spike was stellate but his valve certainly was not. Optimus rubbed up and down over the ridge and Hot Rod whimpered, writhing and clawing at the floor. The seal gave at last under friction and pressure, and Optimus bent his head to lick the remnants aside, and sip the outrush of fluid from within. 

Hot Rod’s valve was a narrow, vertical ellipse; a rare form. Optimus trailed a fingertip along the wet, quivering inner rim and leaned close over Hot Rod to whisper in his audial. “You’re going to be so tight, sweetspark.” Hot Rod moaned, and another gush of lubricant poured from valve and spike. Optimus sat up, positioning himself between the nun’s legs, and thumbed first one side of the inner rim then the other, watching the inner sensor lights come to life, glowing hot and white. “No matter what size spike you take in, with a valve like this, even to a two-wheeler you’ll be tight.” An elliptical valve, however, was as accommodating as it was tensile. It would stretch wide. 

Optimus stroked Hot Rod’s narrow slit slowly; teasing, pushing a fingertip just inside then sliding out to circle again. The valve mesh twitched and grasped at him, trying to draw the fingertip in fully. Optimus bared the tips of his denta, wanting to thrust fast and hard into that slippery heat.

“Oh, Primus!” Hot Rod whimpered, hips juddering, spike twitching. “Primus, Primus, please…oh frag…please…” 

“Mmmhmmmm. How do you want it, sweetspark?” Fingers moving, always moving, but so slow, so soft. 

“Frag me…frag me… Oh Primus please, my valve, oh Primus…” 

“My spike in your tight little valve, hmm? Is that what you want?” One fingertip pushed inside, drawing little circles on the sopping inner mesh. Optimus’ spike felt huge and heavy between his legs, hovering so near that unplumbed valve they could feel each other’s heat. He withdrew the finger and Hot Rod whimpered. Optimus shuddered hard. He wanted to plunge in…but drawing this out was too delicious. 

“Yes, yes! Oh Primus, oh please yes…!” Hot Rod fumbled at his own spike, gripping it as he moved his hips in irregular, jagged circles; but that wasn’t what he wanted. Oh that one finger in his valve! The shock of it, the heat, lighting up every pleasure node in his CPU, charge creeping and crackling over his entire endoform. And then that amazing, blazing touch had been withdrawn! 

Optimus turned him over, pulling Hot Rod’s hips up onto his lap. He stroked the polished white aft in firm circles, letting his spike bobble up to brush against the tight little valve rim, sweet torture for both of them. 

Hot Rod didn’t have the processing cycles to do much more than groan and scrabble at the floor. He didn’t know where this roaring need was coming from, nor how his body was producing so much lubricant, but his valve was wet and grasping, desperate to be filled. He felt Optimus’ big hands curl around his hips, holding him solidly, preparing. Every nanoclick was an agony of waiting. 

He couldn’t tell if he shouted or moaned when he at last felt the hot tip of Prime’s spike brush against his valve. His hands clawed at the platform, but his whole focus was there between his legs, aching and pulsing with heat, weld-hot at the point of contact. And then the contact moved, tip tracing the narrow ellipse; up, down, around slowly, slowly once more before pushing between through a gush of fluid. 

Prime’s spike seemed to slide into him forever, pushing his valve rim wide, wider, wider, an ellipse to a circle, stretching to encompass his girth, in and in, metal against mesh, stellar cycle upon stellar cycle, filling and filling him, lighting up everything inside him, making his body a forge, glowing with ancient powers of life and fire. He lay quivering, trembling, straddling the column upon which the sanctuary perched; linking the god inside the planet, the god inside the Vessel, the god inside himself. Silver spilled from his spike but he hardly felt it.

Optimus’ back arched, his face turned to the ceiling, optics shut, lips parted. He was sheathed to the rim, so tight, so hot. His spike pulsed but could do little more than that, constricted almost painfully. Almost, but not quite. He bared his denta, reluctantly withdrew, spike expanding as it emerged. He held himself poised, gasping, only the tip of his spike resting against Hot Rod’s valve. 

“Hnnnn! Don’t stop!” Hot Rod tried to push his hips back, but the Prime held him fast, spike-tip stroking lightly up and down the narrow golden rim. 

With a shudder, at last Optimus pushed inside, hands clenching on Roddy’s hips as his spike was squeezed within. In, sinking to the hilt. A slow roll of hips. Out, moaning as the rim’s tightness made him keenly aware of every segment, every ridge and whorl of his spike as he withdrew. In again, arching deeper, his torso bowing, spike throbbing. 

Out… 

In... 

Out... In…

Out. In. Primus flickered in his optics, in and out, as the rhythm of his thrusts slowly increased. 

“Oohhhhhh…harder… Harder!” Hot Rod could see nothing but white but he didn’t care whether his optics had shorted as long as that delicious huge spike kept pumping into him. Hammer striking anvil, striking deep; their rims chiming, the sound ringing through the hall like bells underground. Optimus’ hips pistoned smoothly, slowly, slowly increasing in tempo. “Faster!” 

Optimus set a swift but deliberate pace, knowing well the kind of charge he was building. Hot Rod’s moans became a continuous low howl through clenched denta. Splashes of lubricant spotted Optimus’ thighs with every thrust. With one hand and then the other, he released Hot Rod’s hips, winding one arm around the nun’s sleek chest, caressing; bearing his own weight with the other. Hot Rod moved a hand to cover his on the fluid-splashed platform.

//This. This…// Hot Rod private-commed, rocking full and hard into every thrust. //If there was nothing else but this, I would want it…//

Optimus understood. Mainspring, Orion’s second lover, had been the same, taking simple comfort in the repeated, rocking motion, the closeness, the long, relaxed approach to a very basic pleasure. Hot Rod might not be experienced enough to articulate it fully, but he instinctively knew what he wanted, wasn’t inhibited in requesting it, and that was admirable. //I’m going to fill you,// he told Roddy, thrusting faster. 

And faster. Metal struck ringing notes from metal, vibrating throughout Hot Rod’s frame, down into the endoform beneath, thrilling deep nodes and nexi, filling every atom with pleasure. It coursed like energon through his lines, flushing everything at once with power, sending him into a meditative state unlike any he had achieved before, climaxing steadily. Fill me, he thought. I am filled. And Optimus’ roar of ecstasy was dim in his mind, loud across audials and armor, a fierce, hot singing inside him with the hot rush of fluid filling him and filling him; and when his own transfluid tank was empty he felt something shift inside, something open, a temporary passage, and the blazing current ran through him until godsfluid filled his tank, filled his spike and spilled from him across the platform.

Optimus stroked the quivering white spoiler, gentle to ease the trembling body beneath him. He withdrew slowly, sitting back on his heels, his hands moving to gather the young nun into his arms.

Hot Rod turned, quick of body even half-sated, and licked the tip of Prime’s spike into his mouth, grasping it firmly with one hand, the fingers of the other busy in his own valve. He couldn’t get enough of it. His valve was his center, his core, his passage to Primus’ spark itself. 

Optimus rumbled softly, canting his hips into the attention. But he noted Hot Rod’s busy other hand. If that was what the young nun wanted… “Hot Rod?”

//Your tank isn’t empty,// Hot Rod sent, optics fiery blue. 

//Indeed not.// Optimus lifted him, lay back, rearranging his parts in the way that would best please them both, and seated Hot Rod firmly; valve to spike, spike to valve. His engine purred, and his hands stroked Hot Rod’s slender cuisses, but he remained otherwise quiescent, waiting. 

//Move your hips, lad,// Kup said, over private comm. Springer’s helm bobbed between his legs, but the old nun retained enough presence of mind to keep an optic on these last few youngsters. //He’s letting you set the pace now. You know you got a nice frame, we’ll enjoy watching.// Hot Rod shot him a filthy smirk. 

At first he felt awkward and ridiculous, laboring so above a so much larger frame, hips making jagged shapes rather than smooth circles. Soon, though, he sank beneath the mechanics of it, into the feeling in his valve. His spike was rigid in the Vessel’s valve, and that felt nice, sure. Optimus hummed and revved beneath him, head tilted back, frame arched; and that was heady energon itself, giving pleasure, sharing pleasure. Oh slag yeah this was good, it was wonderful; he rocked harder, loving the sound and vibration and splash of lubricants on their thighs. But. He wanted…oh Primus…Primus, Prime could thrust _harder_ and Roddy just wanted him to keep fragging him… 

The Vessel rolled them over, curling hands around Roddy’s hips, and Hot Rod nearly sobbed in bliss as Prime knelt above him, pulling Roddy’s hips up, legs spread. Optimus pulled out for a moment, enjoying the sight of his spike poised against that golden slip of a valve, then sank into Hot Rod till their rims chimed. 

//Yes,// Roddy moaned. //Yes. Yes.// Timed with each thrust, gloriously full of the Vessel’s spike; and if his spike gave some measure of enjoyment in return that was great. //Yes.// If he sounded like his transmission was looping he was unaware. It was the word his spark was singing. //Yes… Yes…!// Godsfluid sheeted the platform, flowing outward as they climaxed over and over. (Seaspray lay on his belly, rubbing his valve in it as it spread over the floor until his own tank refilled and his spike repressurized.) The light changed around them, but Roddy didn’t care. He was deep, floating and falling, dark and bright at once. 

Prime did something with their legs, rearranging them. Hot Rod didn’t care, optics off, limbs lax, as long as his legs were spread and Prime kept touching his valve. Touch it he did, pressing the narrow slit against his own valve and rolling his hips in tight little vertical circles. Roddy tried to sit bolt upright but that would mess with their alignment and by Primus he did not want to stop this…this thing Prime was doing; the sensitive rims and wet mesh of their valves stroking each other so sweetly. 

And this too drew his awareness toward Primus. Outward, connecting pleasure from the rims of his valve to the rest of his body, to the rest of the world; the gateway, the portal, the step between one space and another, one word and another. And there was no way, he thought, for a mortal body to contain this transience, this motion of feeling. The charge would ground and he must overload, but the rising and the expanding continued onward and outward, and the words contained and transmitted through the archivist, the librarian Prime, expanded with him, the glyph that meant the entirety of the cosmos, shaping their bodies together, bright as the first moment of the first explosion, and Roddy hurtled through every threshold, spinning at last into a kind of climax his body understood, that left his spark changed forever.

Bodily need abated for the moment – he was certain his _desire_ would never cease – he lay strutless on the platform, fuel low, recharge imminent. He felt great heavy arms around him, movement of a dark, rustling field, mass closing in. Optimus lipped the edge of his jaw, nuzzled his neck cables.

Then other arms, many hands lifted him, and he found he liked that immensely, too. He had longed so for hands, for touch. Use of hands was permissible, but the specific strictures had made him wary; too easy to go wrong, and he – even in his most flamboyant fits of youthful pique – had never wanted to leave the Order. The many hands carried him from the platform. Solicitous fields washed through him. He was settled by a wall, held close, given energon, petted gently. 

Blurr gave Roddy a wide-eyed look, then grinned. A jaunty salute on his way to his own assignation with the Vessel. Where was Drift? Hot Rod slipped into light recharge. 

Around the hall a number of couples were exploring valve-to-valve pleasure. Perceptor and Bumblebee’s hips were busy, legs entwined, their vents sharp and gasping. Above the waist they held each other tenderly, Perceptor cupping Bee’s helm, one thumb stroking his cheek. Jazz and Smokescreen went at it with legs sprawled every which way, with enthusiastic cries and unsuccessfully stifled giggles. Wheeljack had his finger-probes out, grasping beneath Kup’s armor, though his focus was clearly more on their nether point of contact. Springer and Trailbreaker, Red and Firestar, Sideswipe and Sunstreaker. 

When Blurr returned his attention to and ascended the platform, the Vessel had regained his kneeling posture. Waiting for him. Both of their panels were open, though for the moment the Prime’s spike had been retracted. The heat that had built slow and sure in Blurr’s body coiled and surged.

Blurr’s legs were so long Optimus had only to lean forward to lick his seals, placing his hands warm on Blurr’s feet. Sheeny smithsonite in complex swooping patterns with pale blue topaz, lined with silver and titanium, graced with the blue ring of the trial. Blurr pushed into him, clutching at Prime’s helm as that big glossa explored him, and those big fingers caressed his ankles. He must have grabbed an antenna a little roughly, though, because Optimus winced. 

“Sorrysorrysorry!” Blurr meeped, letting go and windmilling because Prime’s hands were still holding his feet down. 

//A kiss will make amends,// Optimus purred, lifting his face with what his oldest friends would have recognized as a very Orion-like smile. Cheeks hot, Blurr obliged. A hot glossa flicked into his mouth, then lingered when Blurr licked back, sucking intently; so intently he didn’t notice at first that the Vessel’s hands moved slowly up his legs. Until a fingertip circled his valve seal, rubbing at the center, testing its pliancy. Prime’s glossa licked in and out of Blurr’s mouth, as his fingertip pressed and released against Blurr’s valve seal. In and out, drawing Blurr’s glossa out into Prime’s mouth. In and out. Faster. Both of their engines rumbled; Blurr’s high-tuned and throaty, and Prime hummed in harmony, appreciative. Out and in. Faster, farther. Blurr felt the shiver of charge running high between head and array, lighting up everything between, until he rocked up onto the tips of his pedes, overloading in short, sharp waves. 

The heat and slickness over his intact array kept his attention focused on that narrow area. The secure way the metal plates of his armor overlapped, how the open cover made him feel exposed, even when his seals had not yet been broken. He felt hot and wet inside, too, he could feel his own fluids moving as he trembled there, standing mostly because the Prime had hold of his hips, venting softly over his array. Things inside twitched and writhed, wanting to be released. 

His spike probably wasn’t fancy like Roddy’s, just his luck, but he wanted to see it. Wanted to see transfluid spraying out of it. He wanted to see Prime’s spike up close, wanted it in his mouth, in his valve, rubbing against his own spike, wanted to watch it spurt that silver-blue that almost matched Blurr’s spark. He’d been watching all these initiations and he…he just liked spikes. A lot. The accessory booster motors in his legs whirred and hummed, vibrating with pent energy.

Smiling at the pensive expressions crossing Blurr’s mobile face, and the rather pleasing sounds and trembling in the young nun’s thighs, Optimus leaned down again and set to licking those chatoyant, pale seals. The valve seal bowed inward with the least pressure of his glossa, thin and pliant, and he could see the shifting bulge of the spike seal, as Blurr’s spike responded eagerly to every caress. Changing tactics. Prime fitted his mouth around the valve seal and _sucked_. Hard. Blurr went up on his pedes again, venting an odd, high, whispery cry – gasping when the seal popped, gushing lubricant into the Vessel’s mouth. Optimus drank this in, and licked the remnants flat against the generous oval of the inner valve ring. Not a circle, but not the narrow ellipse Hot Rod had. Not uncommon for fleet-footed mechs with narrow pelvic arrangements. Prime lapped at the inner ring, slicking his glossa just inside now and then, enjoying the way Blurr writhed, trying to spread his legs wider and still stand. 

“Please…” Blurr whispered. Optimus’ optics flickered black for a nanoclick.

“Mmmhmmm,” the Vessel said, and slipped a single finger inside. Sensor lights lit with its progress, pushing in more as Blurr’s valve clenched down then unspiralled wide, sheeting lubricant down Prime’s wrist and vambrace. The fingertip stroked gently, circling, rubbing, pressing into the walls, slowly moving deeper. Now Blurr understood the fervor in the nuns around them, rubbing their valves together. Lines of charge swooped upward from his valve to his spark, and he began to thrust, aching for deeper, faster. 

Prime inserted another finger, thumb tracing the outer rim, brushing the lower arc of the spike seal, curling his fingers inside, then scissoring them as Blurr moved. 

Blurr grabbed the Vessel’s wrist, pushing himself fully onto those fingers. His hips gyred in wild arcs at first, but soon he understood the motion he wanted; rocking faster and faster and faster yet, until some kind of threshold was reached, and his whole pelvic assembly began to vibrate. The individual thrusts were fast and short, but the effect as a whole rose through him like a bubble of magma, charge curling and coiling in blue and fuchsia off the points of his armor. His spike burst its seal – Optimus leaned slightly to one side to watch it – burgeoning into full extension with a fine spray of silver. 

“Lovely,” Optimus said. Long and slim, oval in cross-section like his valve, shaded subtly blue at the tip. He licked the spilled transfluid, sucking on the underside, then the tip as Blurr came again, fingers continuing to move inside his valve. 

Blurr reached down slowly, fascinated but oddly hesitant. He’d never touched his own seals before, had rarely even opened his interface panel; rubbing his thighs and ankles and feet had always been enough to send him into meditative overload. Now his seals were open, and there was all this…stuff…jutting out of him and surging inside him. 

//Yes,// Prime hummed, withdrawing his fingers, leaning back a little to give Blurr full view of himself. //Touch yourself. It is, after all, your own body.// 

Grasping his spike was like completing a circuit, slaking a longing he had never fully articulated to himself, In his mind, later, he compared it to gulping cube after cube of high-density fuel after a long, hard race when you were micros from empty and shutdown, and the replenishing energy sang through every line and system. He stroked up and down the length, lingering over each segment, his fingertips tracing the graceful raised line along the center of the underside. He watched the pale metallic blue at the tip grow more vivid, and he swung his hips into the rhythm, thrusting into his hand, humming at both the feel of the hot, pulsing metal in his hand and of the fingers and palm wrapped around it. He liked this, liked feeling both. 

“Try using your other hand on your valve,” Prime encouraged, illustrating himself, sliding two fingers into his own valve. Blurr whimpered, watching, but followed suit, optics widening and brightening as the sensations rippled and washed through each other like spreading waves in a mercury fountain, the peaks rocking him higher and higher. He crouched, spreading his knees as wide as he could, grinding down, thrusting harder, optics riveted on the Prime’s hands, moving on the Prime’s spike and in the Prime’s valve. Heat poured from his body, charge rose bright and sharp through every system; he threw his head back, biting off a cry as reality collapsed and overload crashed through him, silver jetting from his spike in a long, high arc.

He felt hot liquid patter across his ventrum, his thighs, his hands and the array he stroked slowly now – and with an electric jolt he came again and fell forward onto his knees. 

Warm hands caught him, drew him into a gentle embrace, laid him deftly on the platform. 

He onlined his optics. The Prime smiled down at him, lying beside him, one hand resting lightly on Blurr’s ventrum. An optic ridge lifted, asking permission.

Blurr half sat up, wrapping his arms around the Vessel’s neck, pulling him down into a kiss, wriggling his body as that much larger body moved on top of him, wrapping his legs around Prime’s waist. He felt Prime’s spike nuzzle the entrance to his valve, felt Prime’s hands lift him slightly off the stone, cupping his shoulders and aft. Blurr’s spike reinflated directly into Prime’s valve, grasped firmly there within as Prime’s spike slid carefully, segment by segment into Blurr’s small valve. 

Oh yeah, Blurr thought, the reversed array. 

Prime sank into a deep, slow rhythm, venting in kind, gusting hot over Blurr’s antennae and central finial. 

Faster, Blurr thought, but he didn’t want to seem too much like Hot Rod. Instead of thrusting his hips, he figured out how to move his spike, and ripple the lining of his valve. Thrash and squeeze, faster and faster, until both were vibrating and the Prime’s optics opened wide in surprise and that big frame shuddered and jerked, a startled, gasping moan escaping his vocalizer. Blurr would have giggled but the surge of hot godsfluid flooding his valve, and the grip of the Prime’s powerful valve silenced him even as it sent him once again over the edge. 

//I have never felt anything quite like that,// Optimus murmured. He rolled them over, arranging Blurr’s lean, now slippery body sprawled over his chest while Blurr rebooted. An uncommonly attractive sight, Kup thought, as he and Wheeljack enjoyed a similarly languid moment. The gathered nuns stared or jostled each other, impressed with Blurr’s accomplishment. The young nun was going to be very popular for certain revels in the future.

Blurr powered up with an audible thrum, his engines working smooth and clean. He stood on wobbly legs, Prime sitting up to help him. He wasn’t in a hurry, that would be rude, but he would have time with the Bearer again. Right now he was wondering with some pleasant sort of urgency where Mirage was. Well. Mirage could be anywhere. The trick, always, was finding him. Although…no, Mirage hadn’t been initiated yet. Just as well. 

Decided, Blurr pecked a swift kiss on the Bearer’s cheek and skated off to his cell to recharge. 

Beachcomber ambled up to the platform and climbed into the Prime’s lap, standing tip-toe on the tops of Prime’s thighs, nestling his helm under Optimus’ chin. Optimus wrapped his arms around and around him, nearly hiding the minibot – white body; black helm, hands, pedes, face – from view. Beachcomber was small but sturdy; his body well-made and toughened by the elements, his spark bright and unfailingly kind. Everyone else in the hall had been initiated. Everyone else in the hall was curled around new lovers and old friends, whispering endearments, moaning softly, crying out in ecstasy. (Like Perceptor and Bumblebee sitting groin to groin over in a cozy nook, taking turns dipping their spikes into each other, building to a long, slow but immense overload that would probably send them into recharge for days.) Beachcomber’s would be the last initiation taken in the hall. 

“Thank you,” Optimus murmured, kissing the rounded top of Beachcomber’s helm. The first voice in the young Prime’s favor here had been his. 

Beachcomber purred a low chuckle. “You’re being initiated here, too. Buttress and bridge, core of the world.” He splayed a hand over the center of Optimus’ chest. He lifted his face, Optimus dipped his, lips meeting in slow, gentle touches, optics sliding closed. //Core and spark. Can feel it in you. Feel him in you.// He parted his lips, glossas meeting in a slow, gentle slide, circling, in Beachcomber’s mouth, then in Optimus’. //Good metal in this body. They made your armor from deep ores, way deep, mmhmm, close to his core.// 

//Mmm. Did they? No one said…//

Beachcomber kissed him softer, slower, splaying his hands out over the sides of the deep blue helm. Orion Pax, reforged. How much had he really understood, before the Matrix took him as its own? How much had the Senate known? Had they gotten what they’d wanted – or more than they’d bargained for? 

Iron red and cobalt blue and polished steel. Beachcomber explored with hands first, mapping surface topography. Optimus lay back, relaxing even as the nun’s mouth followed the cross-continental route of his hands. Mountains and plains and valleys. Alloys and metamaterials and the rare ceramics, each with their own taste on his glossa, mingling with the unique signature of the Prime’s lubricants and oils. And the dizzying atmosphere of lush transfluid. Spin of the galaxy, yeah, blue like newly-ignited stars. 

He moved from north to south, exploring, feeling a familiar rise, expansion, heat, presence. The plates beneath him shifted, tectonic, slip and spread, seduction of the subduction, and Beachcomber felt optics on him, Optimus shifting as he lifted his head. But the optics that blinked starry black this time were Beachcomber’s.

Optimus widened his optics. Was that what his looked like? Had not Skyfire been similarly enraptured? Yes and yes. 

// **My turn to enjoy _you_** ,// Primus purred, smiling the geologist’s happy little smile. Beachcomber remained in control, would know and feel everything, but Primus was tapped directly into all his sensory feeds. 

Optimus let out a chuff of superheated air from his core. Beachcomber’s smile grew wider. Yes, good, hot air, hot mouth, access to such a forge was what he wanted. He scooted up Prime’s body, sat up and spread his legs, placing his exposed seals over Prime’s mouth. His seals were lapis, selenite, tanzanite, larimar, sapphire, moonstone – a wide variety of blue and white minerals and metals, blended in wildly improbable chemical subtlety, along with the ornate blue ring of the trial. The complex design changed with viewing angle and spectrum; some of those minerals fluoresced and phosphoresced. Optimus licked them languorously, wishing he had a smaller glossa to better define each minute difference in composition. There were layers and layers, thin, iridescent, chatoyant, translucent. Beachcomber swayed and hummed above him, small frame growing hotter and hotter. 

When he began to gasp and twitch, Optimus wrapped his hands around the small nun’s legs, steadying him, alternately licking harder and sucking on one seal then the other. Beachcomber arched, pressing himself down, and both seals gave in an inward, spiral pattern; Prime’s glossa following hotly, delving inside the clenching little valve, snaking a wet caress up the bright silver little spike. 

“Mmmmm!” Beachcomber pushed his spike into Prime’s mouth, where it was eagerly sucked and milked into a first external release, transfluid swiftly imbibed and licked off. There was more surveying to do, of the great body beneath him, though. Beachcomber rolled backward over Prime’s chest, his compact form neatly flexible, squirming the last distance – enjoying every span and overlapping ventral plate, enjoying how his interface array brushed against warm metal – until he was comfortably ensconced between those long, powerful legs. Yes, there was a column he could happily spend many nights and days perched atop! 

He wrapped both hands around the base of the shaft, squeezing as he felt it pulse, and leaned in to sip the tip into his mouth, as he had so wanted to during the trial. Hot and slick, smoothly tapered, sheened with lubricant, blue godsfluid droplets still clinging to the intricate grooves here and there. Beachcomber’s glossa found the emission port and slid inside, dimly aware of Prime’s gasp, more aware of the tension in the Prime’s frame, the thrumming of contained pressure in the spike. His own spike throbbed – he wasn’t ignoring it, but he liked the slow-rising charge of contact deferred. Soon enough, he would slip his spike into Prime’s valve – heat juddered through him – and then he would push himself onto Prime’s spike. He wasn’t afraid. His body would open, expand, just as the two-wheelers had, just as Prime’s body had opened to envelop Skyfire’s spike… Ah! he was so hard at that memory! But he kept his hands moving up and down Prime’s shaft, though lubricant dripped between his own legs, and he felt a gathering of heat and pressure in his own transfluid tank. He had always felt meditation arousal in his entire body, and so he did now, but the further concentration in certain areas made him feel unbalanced in an astonishingly wonderful way. 

As in the trial, Beachcomber stroked Prime’s shaft with long, deep caresses, putting his shoulders, his entire torso into it, moving the column of it so that each wave of pressure was felt down to the struts. This time, Prime was free to overload, and so he did, powerfully, shouting though he kept his body carefully still; too wild a thrust would send his small partner flying. Beachcomber dodged the jet of blue-silver at first, then, after a moment’s contemplation, leaned his mouth into the stream, feeling it spatter hot against his lips and into his mouth, dripping down his chin and neck and chest. Silver drops pattered on the stone platform beneath them as Beachcomber shivered through a quick, hard little overload of his own. 

As Prime’s tide of ecstasy eased, so did his, and he bellied down between Prime’s legs again to get a better look inside his valve. The sensor lights shone bright, almost strident in their spectra, watery behind the shimmer of lubricant. Beachcomber slipped three fingers inside, then his entire hand, rubbing circles upward and inward, humming with enjoyment at the way the sensitive inner mesh rippled and shivered and yet pressed against his touch, hungrily responsive. He licked the upper curves of the nested inner and outer rims, smiled as Prime’s hips made small, nudging motions at him. Between his own legs, his spike seemed to tug at him.

Laughing gently at himself, Beachcomber sat up, shuffling forward on his knees until he was poised over Prime’s array. As he’d seen with the others, Prime’s valve clamped down on him as he entered; a column of basalt in a volcanic throat; swiftly becoming a flexible cave, twisting and rippling and tugging at him – Beachcomber hardly needed to thrust, wriggling his hips more in reaction than direction, enjoying every hot, slippery nanoclick of it. Fluid moved in him, magma chambers shifting between layers, finding an outlet, erupting, sending its hot flow spreading over the land – Beachcomber shuddered, managing to thrust wildly for the last few microclicks; not quite emptied but the wave of heavy lassitude that blanketed him was difficult to resist. He rested his head on Prime’s ventrum, to one side of Prime’s spike, still connected. He felt Prime’s hands caress him. 

One more thing to do, up here with the Vessel, in this ritual space. A feast of things to try later, certainly, but there were others yet to initiate, he knew. 

He sat up, slowly pulling himself free, anticipating, one hand idly trailing fingers through the smeared fluids decorating his chassis. He climbed up, not far, valve twitching already. On hands and knees, he found his way, found the angle he wanted, caught his lips in his dentae as he felt the tip of Prime’s spike against his valve rims. He pushed down, felt the slide and stretch, rising heat, his body re-arranging itself to meet this need. Oh Primus, oh yes, this feeling filling him, this heat, like the inexorable shifting of plates far beneath Cybertron’s cities, down below, warmed by the Core. 

With a last long, shuddering exvent, Beachcomber felt his valve’s outer rim contact Prime’s spike rim. All of that spike, thick and long, was inside him now, and Beachcomber savored the moment, the tight, hot connection, mesh stretched to its fullest extent, every sensor node splayed wide and in full contact with every whorl and segment. He could feel the heat and pulse of the transfluid within, under pressure. He leaned back a little and brought his feet up, resting them on Prime’s faulds, legs splayed wide. Prime had the best view of their joining, thus; but he was given only a moment to appreciate it. 

Then Beachcomber activated the ground-penetrating radar in his feet. 

Pausing in their celebrations both individual and multiple, the other nuns in the hall watched avidly, Optimus writhing and clawing at the platform with every heavy pulse, the weird, almost gravitational vibrations pounding through his entire pelvic structure, deep in the metal, every molecule of him shaken, a fountain of blue godsfluid pouring into Beachcomber’s valve, squirting from their joining in wild, uneven gouts, Beachcomber hanging on to Prime’s cuisses, head thrown back, both laughing as much as crying out in wordless joy, on and on for a geologic age. 

Light moved across the walls, to the floor, up onto the walls again. Beachcomber stirred, finding himself curled on Prime’s chest, head tucked beneath Prime’s chin, those big red arms around him again. 

“Thank you,” Optimus whispered. 

Beahcomber’s visor shimmered blue, silver-white on his dark face, and he smiled. “True Bearer,” he said, meaning it, putting all his delight and joy into the harmonics. He lifted his face for a lingering kiss, then squirmed free, dancing from the platform, angling toward a certain pair of nuns across the floor, whose embraces he particularly wanted to savor. 

The nice thing about valve-on-valve, the nuns were discovering, was that one could still enjoy it with an empty transfluid tank. Perceptor and Bee welcomed Beachcomber into their little circle, nestling him between them, working out the geometry of a triad of valves. Optimus stood, watching them for a moment, happy in their happiness. 

Only a handful of nuns – Hound, Tracks, Mirage, Bluestreak, Arcee, Drift, Rung – remained; and the Magnus. North, south, east, west, above, below, within; mystery. Optimus paused in the doorway, looking back at the celebrants within. He was leaving the hall but the presence of Primus remained.


	4. Sanctuary I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Optimus goes out ~~hunting~~ in search of those nuns who did not, for whatever reason/s wish to have their seals broken in the Great Hall. ;D

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rather than waiting forever for me to finish this part, here, have at least what's been up on the kinkmeme, hey?

**Open Circle – Sanctuary - part 1**

Bluestreak paced his cell. He should have stayed in the hall with the others! He would have been initiated by now if he had, and he wouldn’t be here, fidgeting and nervous. He was glad he’d come to his own room! The others watching would have been kind, but this way none of the awkward, silly things Blue was certain he would say would be said in front of anyone but Primus, and Primus would be gentle with him and wouldn’t tease him about anything later. Primus had better things to do than chide him for babbling. Not that the others did, really, except Hot Rod and his group, and there it wasn’t really chiding, since Blue ranked them, but it was teasing and while Blue didn’t think they meant anything really malicious in it, it was wearing sometimes, and Blue knew he talked and thought a lot but words were so comforting, and they felt good flowing through his vocalizer, the vibrations in the air soothing and reassuring him that he was there and he was an individual, a thinking, feeling person, and not just another drone in the factories. Not just designation B-420.

The factories had been a long time ago, Blue reminded himself. He was a nun of the Solian Order now, and he was the best shot among them, even better than Perceptor, who could see farther and whose light cannon was more powerful at certain ranges than Blue’s rifle, but Perceptor had made Blue’s rifle just for Blue and it shot true as Blue’s spark, and Blue hadn’t missed in centuries. 

Oh, Primus, when was the Bearer going to come to him? Blue paced. Maybe he was the last? Had everyone else gone already? Was he really the only one who wanted to do this alone in his cell? No, Mirage had faded out, and Tracks had bolted from the hall when Jazz was up on the platform. Maybe others had, too. Where was Ultra Magnus? He had come back in only briefly, making sure everything was going all right, and then…Blue had been distracted by things going on on the platform, but he was pretty sure Ultra Magnus had left, and hadn’t been there still, by the time Beachcomber had gone up, and the Magnus would have been next after Beachcomber. 

A soft tap came at the metal door. Blue froze for a second, then recovered himself and coded the door open. The True Bearer, the young Prime, the Vessel of Primus stood there, optics black and starry.

“Aahhh,” said Primus. “Bluestreak.” 

“Oh!” Blue squeaked, but managed to gesture welcomingly and didn’t trip over his own pedes, making room as the Vessel stepped inside. The Vessel took Blue’s hands and kissed the fingertips as the door closed behind him. He bowed low and kissed Blue’s lips, one arm slipping gently around Blue’s waist, pulling him closer…and before he quite realized what was happening, Blue found himself venting hard, engine hot and running high and the Vessel’s hands were all over him and his own hands were all over the Vessel, and a glossa not his own was in his mouth gently licking and his interface hatch was open again, what was wrong with the thing, maybe the clamps were loose and fingers were touching him down there stroking and that felt good it felt amazing and he’d never, he wanted, words tumbled over each other getting mixed up and there was a heaviness gathering inside him and as he writhed in the Prime’s arms, under the Prime’s hands and mouth, fluids moved and he felt a hot bursting sensation and heard a small wet patter and then the Vessel was licking him down there, licking, oh Primus, it was his spike, dripping and new to the air, bobbing slightly with each stroke of glossa and Blue could feel that movement down in the roots and Prime’s finger was pushing… pushing inside him deep, into his valve, stroking the roots of his spike through the upper valve wall, and still licking him too and then as Blue watched Prime took his entire spike in his mouth and sucked so hard Blue exploded, or his mind did, or something did only it didn’t hurt it made him one with the universe. 

Blue came back online moments later, by his chronometer. Optimus, blue-opticked, sat by his side, one hip barely perched on Blue’s narrow berth. He didn’t fit. A warm, heavy hand rested on Blue’s chest. Blue blinked, and it seemed to take an eon for his shutters to close and open again. 

“Would you like to continue to touch me as well?” Optimus asked softly, expression gently amused. “Or shall I go on?” The hand on Blue’s chest moved down, across his ventrum, stopping just north of his interface array – though his fields and heat brushed across the rims as palpably as a physical touch. 

“Yes!” Blue moaned, spreading his legs. Yes to everything! Although Blue didn’t know what to do with his hands first, it was so hard to think with Optimus petting him like that, pulling one outflung leg over his lap, pulling Blue’s groin closer to his big erect spike, and Blue gasped, knowing where that spike was going to go. 

“Yes?” Optimus smiled, and Blue could feel the heat of his spike rising along his array, close but not touching. Blue felt lubricant course between his legs.

“Yes. Yes!” And Optimus pulled him all the way onto his lap, pulled Blue’s valve onto his spike, hands warm and strong on his hips, and then there was a soft whirr and click and the spike in his valve moved in a strange way, and then Blue’s spike was being guided, oh that big hand, stroking him like that, pushing his spike in, in, oh inside Prime’s valve, both at once and Blue had barely time to absorb that realization when Prime’s hips bucked up, thrusting into and onto him, steady and smooth, but faster then and faster, and Blue stuffed fingers into his mouth at first to shut himself up but Prime pulled his hand away and kissed him, and Blue felt dizzy and the world shifted or maybe Prime just stood up.

Blue let himself fall back, suspended, upside down, feeling his hips being pulled up and the Vessel continued noisily plunging; spikes into wet valves, their lubricants squirting and spattering their thighs with each thrust, until Blue was moaning in a long low, wordless helpless cry and writhing, pushing up with his hands against the floor, pushing himself harder and harder up onto Prime’s spike, legs bouncing until he managed to curl them around Optimus’ thighs. This was right, this was good, Blue’s body a column, a vast tower supporting the Sanctuary, Primus’ body, open and extended, entering and entered, the Vessel laboring above, Primus below, their cries like the groans of metal heated by the sun. 

Blue shouted and climaxed after only a few cycles, silver jetting from his spike in pulses compelled by the rhythm of Prime’s hips and the internal waves of his valve milking him, apex nodules moving back and forth over the tip to alternately spread the fluid further and interrupt the internal pressure, sending Blue into an overlapping cycle of overload. 

Roaring with pleasure, watching the writhing, slicked body beneath him, Prime overloaded as well, thrusting harder as the blue godsfluid spilled and splashed out of him, into and overflowing Bluestreak’s valve, runnelling down Blue’s body and Prime’s legs in a bright glowing fall. 

Warm, exhausted in a way he’d never felt before, Blue curled on his side, gently settled on the berth. He kissed Prime’s fingertips as they brushed his lips. He would have a short recharge, recouping the energy he’d spent in nervous waiting and then in pleasure – and then he would join the other nuns in the hall, to celebrate until the time came to leave. And to face the outside world.

.oOo0oOo.

There they were. Across a sea of writhing or sprawled bodies and silvery puddles or glowing blue oceans of transfluid, Jazz and Smokescreen were curled together in a corner. Prowl came over and crouched next to them, putting a hand on Smokescreen’s shoulder. “Thank you,” he said.

“Prowl,” Smokescreen began.

“I know,” Prowl said. “You’ve been in love with Jazz for a long time.”

“Yes, but…” 

“I’m very happy for you both.” He was more glad than he knew how to express. He knew something had happened to Jazz long ago. He hadn’t been the same after Sentinel’s unsuccessful visit. That Jazz refused to tell him, his own twin, had hurt, though Prowl had had some difficulty in articulating that to himself. Smokescreen had helped somehow, and for that Prowl was grateful. 

“Prowl.” Smokescreen put an arm around Prowl’s waist and pulled him close. 

Jazz grinned. Prowl now had on his _does not compute_ face. He had evidently – and fortunately – compartmentalized his battle protocols well away from all this interfacing and snogging business, because otherwise he would never have been this slow. Prowl looked from Smokescreen to Jazz and back again. Not blinking. Jazz grinned wider. So. Cute. 

Jazz took Prowl’s hand and pressed it to his own cheek. “He likes both of us.” He then guided Prowl’s hand unerringly to Smokescreen’s …ah, well, his interface panel was already open…to Smokescreen’s spike. Prowl’s optics went very wide. Surely he’d had his hands on a number of spikes here, other than Prime’s? Hadn’t he? Jazz hadn’t exactly been paying attention. He suddenly thought he might have taken things too fast. 

Smokescreen gasped. He’d been venting a little quickly before, but now apparently Prowl had done more than just sit there like a drone. There went Prowl’s fields, finally, going from that uniquely Prowlesque blend of concern and confusion to pretty well heated up in less than a nanoclick. Prowl tipped his head slightly, leaning in. Smokescreen made a helpless little moaning noise and pushed him down to the floor, kissing him hungrily, legs tangling, Prowl’s spike emerging wet from its housing, slipping and sliding over Smokey’s ventrum, and Smokescreen’s spike wriggling and nudging in search of Prowl’s valve. 

He should look away, Jazz told himself. He shouldn’t want to see Prowl’s valve like that, open and glossy with fluid, stretching as Smokescreen’s spike pushed inside. Shouldn’t he? He couldn’t look away. 

“Prowl…Prowl…” Muffled by Prowl’s mouth, by Prowl’s neck cables, by Prowl’s gently exploring fingers, Smokescreen’s voice trembled, could manage nothing more coherent than his desire’s name. 

Prowl stroked him in turn, kissed him, caressed him with tenderness. His face plates were heated, his expression clearly aroused. But not with the same passion he’d shown with Prime. Jazz rolled to his knees, positioning himself between Smokescreen’s legs. He cupped Smokey’s nice little aft, rocking as it was with thrusts into Prowl. Jazz was so hard. Maybe Smokescreen knew, and maybe it didn’t matter. Jazz supposed it didn’t in a way; certainly there was no reason they couldn’t enjoy one another’s bodies like this. But already he hoped Smokescreen wouldn’t break his spark over Prowl, not when Prowl was so obviously besotted with Prime. 

Letting Smokescreen’s thrusts guide him, Jazz angled his hips, slid inside, clasped firmly by a swiftly-becoming-familiar valve. So hot, so good. He clasped Smokey’s hip with one hand, steadying himself; petted Smokey’s ventrum with the other, audial tuned to his friend’s enthusiastic hums and moans. 

Prowl caught Jazz’s gaze over Smokey’s shoulder. //I’m glad, Jazz. This is good. I like him.// Prowl was enjoying this, there was no hiding that, not with white-hot fields and hands clutching at them uncoordinated and passionate, and optics bright as dawn. 

But. 

Jazz bowed his head over Smokey’s neck, nibbling and licking, biting the black tips of Smokey’s backswept chevron, just to hear him gasp, just to feel his valve clench. //I’m glad, too.// This could have been complicated. It could still get complicated, but for now it was good, and they were together, and Smokescreen did his best to make Jazz forget that Prowl was the good twin, the only worthy one, and maybe someday Jazz would believe that for real; but for now their bodies rocking together like this was enough, this liquid pleasure was enough, and the overload that swept through them took all three at once, up and down and out and in and all the sacred directions, and all their optics went black.

When they rebooted, they found Prowl had left them. 

Jazz sighed. Prowl had duties, certainly, moreso now that they were preparing to leave the sanctuary, even if only temporarily. But Prime was out hunting the last few virgins; Prowl could have stayed with them a little longer.

“We’ll talk,” Smokey said, caressing Jazz’s cheek-guard. “I’m not trying to lay claim. We’ll talk later, and, as Skyfire says, all shall be well.”

Jazz smiled, and kissed him.

.oOo0oOo.

“Please come in,” Tracks said, shutting the door to his cell firmly behind the Vessel. A cube of fresh energon stood on the small table. Tracks pressed it into the Vessel’s hands, watched him drink, took the empty cube and gestured gracefully to the empty berth. “Please sit.” Inane politenesses, but what else could he say? Optimus was kind, everyone had seen that, but Tracks felt that he had made things awkward for himself by waiting. He could have been initiated like everyone else there in the hall and no one would have thought anything of it.

But he couldn’t have done it that way. Not really. Not if he wanted to find out…the things he wanted to find out. 

“Thank you,” Optimus said as he settled at one end of the berth, leaving plenty of room for Tracks. Tracks had other ideas, and sat directly in the Prime’s lap, leaning comfortably on the broad, red chest, flattening one hand on the center, over the spark. Smiling, Optimus wrapped an arm around Tracks’ shoulders and leaned back against the wall. No hurry, no pressure. Optimus liked cuddling, too. “Are you comfortable?”

Tracks nodded. “I’m not really shy.” Should he explain first or let the Vessel broach his seals and at least get that part out of the way? 

“There is nothing wrong with being shy,” Optimus said, stroking Tracks’ back. “Nothing to be ashamed of. If you were.” 

Tracks grinned up at him, almost laughed. Not what he’d expected, this Prime. Orion Pax wasn’t so very young, he’d been an archivist for some time. But Optimus had only been a Prime for less than two stellar cycles. 

“That’s an interesting pattern,” Optimus continued, bringing his other hand up to trace the intricate, branching lines of white that spread like wings across Tracks’ chest. “I’ve seen something like it before.”

“Oh?” Tracks was amazed that hadn’t come out as a wanton moan. Just the light touch of the Prime’s fingers across his chest armor…oh Primus…

“Yes.” Optimus bent his head to nuzzle Tracks’ helm. He’d felt the flare of heat under his hands and the sudden arousal that blazed in Tracks’ fields. “It is very like the pattern of the lock for the Key to Vector Sigma.”

Tracks’ optics widened. Optimus’ hands kept moving, slowly, gently, so distracting. “You…? Oh, but of course. When you were given the Matrix.” He was only keeping his chest closed by active force of will. That hand moving on his armor, tracing the winged pattern over and over…

“Yes.”

“And you’ve…you’ve been close to the Core.” He arched into Optimus’ touch, venting hard. “Close to…ahhh!... Primus’ spark itself.”

“Yes.”

Tracks overloaded. He rebooted and still Optimus traced the pattern, dizzying him with unsated desire. 

“Lovers of Primus indeed,” Optimus said, smiling as he kissed Tracks’ mouth. “Would you prefer that I left your seals unbreached?”

Tracks felt his chest plates open fully, heat rising from his endoform beneath them. “No.” He shook his head. “No. I…I don’t mind being touched there. I do feel things…down there when I meditate. It’s only that the feelings in my spark are much more powerful. Much more…arousing.”

“So I see.” Optimus stroked the soft, warm, dark grey lines and arcs of Tracks’ endoform. Armorless he’d done before, but rarely. It was quite…stirring. Tracks seemed to think so as well, for the golden tips of special cables slowly emerged from housings around Tracks’ headlights. Optimus touched one and Tracks shivered, hissing with sharply indrawn ventilation, internal fans roaring. Prime sucked on a cable tip experimentally, enjoying the way Tracks writhed and moaned, the flashing, vivid lust spinning through his fields. He trailed kisses down from the cable tip, across Tracks’ ventrum, pausing over the interface panel. “Are you certain you don’t mind?”

“Mmmm…please indulge yourself!” His interface panel retracted. Tracks petted that cobalt helm, drawing his fingertips up the sharp central vent then curving his hands over the audial disks. Lips and glossa moved over his seals, circling the rims – that did feel nice, he had no trouble admitting that. He knew his seals were cobalt blue like Prime’s helm, metallic, vivid in the light. The design on his chest was reproduced on both seals in intricately worked gold and ruby. Optimus’ glossa traced every line and branch, flicking the small cabochons arrayed in the centers of the designs, tracing the Primus-blue rings that were the mark of the trial. 

Slowly, gently he pressed a single fingertip through the hot, pliant valve seal, then inside, stroking the petals of the broken seal into the inner walls. As long as the hand on Tracks’ chest kept moving, kept delving into the sensitive little recesses around the headlight assemblies, Tracks remained on the rising path, breathless and moaning. Optimus pushed his finger in farther, stretching the tender sensor mesh. “Tracks…may I…?”

“Yes,” Tracks gasped, writhing. Optimus licking and fingering his interface equipment was nice by itself, but that combined with the stimulation from his chest was staggering. His fans and liquid cooling systems had just about given up, were running at peak capacity and still his core temperature rose, dizzying, delirious, affecting his CPU it must be, because he knew he’d never felt like this before. He was vaguely aware of Prime moving him, repositioning both their bodies; Tracks now face-down, aft high; but the hand on his chest continued its beguiling work, leaving Tracks unable to vocalize at all as his arms were guided to the edge of his berth, his pedes now apparently on the ground, knees bent but touching the side of the berth platform not the floor, hips lifted as his thighs were spread, and Optimus’ fingers working in him and on him, sensitive lips kissing his helm and antennae and finials, nibbling intently on his neck cables, but really neither of them were distracted from the foci of their desires. 

Tracks felt the overload build deep in his body, charge compressed throughout his entire torso, streaking like lightning down his helpless limbs like overflow, but still building, hot as a star. 

He was only peripherally aware of Prime’s spike touching the rims of his valve, only peripherally aware of the turgor of his own spike as it burst through its seal, both spikes dripping, spattering the floor with hot lubricant. The hand on his chest…oh Primus, now both hands…Optimus had his trajectory planned and now could devote both hands to their holy task, stroking and squeezing Tracks’ chest, rubbing between flanges as Tracks lifted his armor even wider, building charge upon charge, leaning close so that their sparks could feel each other, spinning so fast Tracks thought they might explode. 

Optimus pushed forward, the tip of his spike slipping a small way inside. The interior heat was astonishing. Liquid trickled and crawled down his length. He wanted to sink into Tracks and then pound away, charge sitting bright and almost uncomfortably hot low in his chassis. He pushed in a little further, mostly torturing himself now, as he suspected Tracks barely noticed. The tip of his spike was now fully enclosed, stretching the tight little wet rims, and the tensile mesh within – the silky, pliant walls squeezed him, fluttering in reflexive motions as Tracks moaned and writhed, closer and closer to another deep-body overload. He pulled his spike out, rubbing Tracks’ chest more and more firmly, fingers concentrating on the cable tips, and those most sensitive recesses, harder and faster as Tracks panted and quivered beneath him, freezing for a split second before arching hard, screaming through an overload that must have fried a few unprepared circuits. Tracks shuddered with aftershocks, optics guttering as Prime stroked him, gentled him down. 

Transfluid had pumped unnoticed from Tracks’ now retracted spike, and a cataract of lubricant had gushed from his valve. All the more slippery! So good for what Prime wanted next. His spike throbbed, pushed in again, farther this time and Optimus hummed, feeling his spike swell as Tracks’ chest did. He pushed all the way in, caressing Tracks’ chest softly, but bracing his legs to thrust firm and deep, letting the pistoning of his hips affect the rhythm of his hands, both of them enjoying the way Tracks’ body swayed and bounced, the sounds of their gasps and moans, the mingling scents of their lubricant and Tracks’ transfluid. Prime’s fingers found the cable tips again, and this time pulled the cables out, slowly, length by length. 

Tracks bit the side of his own hand, trying to stifle his cries as he overloaded hard, thrashing quietly in Optimus’ arms, and his spike seemed to open on a torrent of silver that splashed across the floor of his cell. He felt as though it wasn’t just his spike engorged with fluid, that his entire body was hot and wet and swollen with it, throbbing, aching to be touched, breathtakingly sensitive, his armor the merest shell. And that shell suddenly unbearably constrictive. 

He wanted it off. All of it, though at least the chest pieces would be good. He wanted to be exposed, naked in front of this Prime; who had stripped himself down willingly in front of them during the first trial. A sight Tracks had been unable to take his optics from. Just as well Optimus had so quickly disappeared down the ladder.

“So hot,” Optimus whispered, letting the cables spool gently back into their housings, continuing to thrust steadily into Tracks’ valve. “So good…” 

Tracks thrummed and purred, enjoying the motion Optimus imparted to their bodies, the bump and glide, hitch and judder, the way their parts, with their complex interconnections, slid on each other. He fumbled at the latches, found them at last, pulled his chestplates off, tossing them into a corner, followed by pauldrons and the upper lamés of his ventrum armor. All of it off would be bliss upon bliss, but to be bare-breasted, with the Vessel’s hands upon him, caressing his inner body…

The world spun. Tracks found himself, he thought, perhaps on the floor, but as the Vessel’s mouth joined his hands on Tracks’ exposed chest, he could be on the second moon for all he knew for sure. Licking and nibbling, kissing, sucking gently on cable-tips, hands stroking in broad arcs over shoulders and sides. Writhing wasn’t enough and his optics were out, touch flooding his CPU unyoked to any other incoming data, and he only knew they were making sounds because his chest, his body thrummed with it, and even this fell away as charge built, coiling through his endoform steady and hot and inexorable. He overloaded like lightning, and even as his senses cleared, as he unshuttered his optics, he saw the Vessel reposition himself, straddling Tracks’ chest to stroke it with his spike—

—and charge rose again, hard and fast, boiling through him, striking outward in a solar flare, arcing back to him and to Optimus, and the last thing Tracks felt as he slid briefly into recharge was the heavy sluice of godsfluid streaming over his chest.

He woke. Only a few clicks had passed. Optimus lay beside him, watching his optics light. Tracks reached for him.

He was surprised, later, for a moment, how much he enjoyed having Optimus spike him. It felt nice, certainly. Optimus could go on doing that for as long as he wanted. It was also – more importantly, Tracks decided, once he’d thought about it for a bit – lovely to watch Optimus while he was doing it. It was so clear that the Prime was enjoying it a lot; his face became vividly expressive, and his fields were so beautiful, transcendent perhaps, powered as they were by both Prime’s own spark and the Matrix and whatever other parts of Primus were in residence at the moment. 

Optimus stroked Tracks’ bare chest, not yet trying to arouse him, but comfortingly, as if to say this desire of his was good and right and sweet. And Optimus settled his valve around Tracks’ spike when it emerged, and again this basic rhythm of their bodies together set the rhythm for the other things they did.

“Do you,” Optimus asked, between kisses, “know why it is you prefer your chest to be touched?” 

Tracks moaned softly. He didn’t want to talk or think, he wanted those hands to never stop petting him like this, to keep finding every sensory node and niche, to send that exquisite friction vibrating through him to the spark. “They s-said…” he tried. The rising heat was doing odd things to his vision. “Someone...someone said I…when I first emerged from the Well…oh… I don’t… I don’t know…” He held on to Optimus’ wrists, bucking against those hands; the sliding, squeezing ripple around his spike felt good and the aching of his valve felt good but it was the hands on his chest, the fingers teasing the seams as if to release the heat within, and oh Primus even that wasn’t quite enough. 

//Sharing sparks was not always forbidden,// Optimus whispered over a very tight private channel. Tracks gasped, his optics focusing to narrow blue slits. //It was a high, sacred intimacy, once. Long ago.// 

His endoform parted by microns beneath Optimus’ questing fingers, untouched structures beneath surging; Tracks shuddered, silver transfluid spraying into Prime’s valve, and Optimus rode him down and down, halfway to recharge, even the sleepy rumble of Tracks’ fine-tuned engine providing enough of a jolt for glowing blue transfluid to spill and overflow, mingling with the silver. 

Optimus settled Tracks gently on his berth, stroking his limbs, petting his armor into place. //If you truly wish it, I will gladly share my spark with yours.//

Tracks’ spike repressurized. 

Smiling, Optimus bent to it, taking it fully into his mouth. His hands wandered over Tracks’ legs and torso, but his glossa was most active, licking and flicking and swirling until Tracks whimpered with the last of a series of sharp, short overloads, emptying his transfluid tanks to the Vessel’s commanding thirst. Sucking hard to collect every drop, Optimus released Tracks’ spike and coaxed it back into its housing, petting the panel as it closed. 

“…But, won’t we…” Tracks’ voice sank to an almost frightened whisper, “…bond?”

“No,” Optimus said. “That would take quite a higher level of intention, and effort. Do you _want_ to bond with me? I am afraid that I cannot in good conscience do so, as the world stands now.”

“No,” Tracks said, abashed. “I didn’t mean to imply—!”

“Is there someone you _would_ like to bond with?”

“I…” Tracks bit his lip, sorry he’d brought the subject up. “He wouldn’t…he’s… I’m just a… No. I mean yes, but never mind. It’s not… Never mind.”

//Tracks.// Optimus kissed him deeply, bumping their chests together. //Tracks, if someone truly loves you, he will love you for your whole self, body, mind and spark. You are worthy, you are beautiful, and I hope this world becomes again one in which you may become anything you aspire to, anything you truly desire.// He lay back on the floor, drawing Tracks atop him. 

//That’s why you and Megatronus fought the Senate,// Tracks said, confirming to himself what Ultra Magnus and the others had guessed might as easily have been the gladiator’s ploy to lure in the naïve librarian. //That’s why you fight Megatron now.// Not just Optimus the Prime, but Orion Pax, speaking to him out of his own convictions, his own oaths. 

//Yes.//

Optimus opened himself first. Tracks watched in awe as the fierce blue light of the Matrix shone forth, the crystals in their housing pulsing with light and life. Then this shifted aside, rotating to bare Optimus’ own humbler spark. That was beautiful, too, Tracks thought. No less worthy of love and admiration. 

“The coding is very ancient,” Optimus explained, his voice oddly distant. “Search your very deepest programming. The first thing your body did, before you climbed from the Well of All Sparks was close its chest around your spark. If it knew how to close, it knows how to open.” And as he had said, sharing sparks had, very long ago, been an accepted if extremely intimate practice. He would not have considered doing so with someone he knew so little, but this was a special case, as all his time here in the cloisters had been special. 

Deep. Deeper, Tracks attained the first two levels of meditation easily – his body was well-aroused already. His endoform parted. Eager, simple the command, as though his body itself had been waiting for this his whole life. Red-gold light shone, blended with the light of Prime’s spark. 

That’s me, Tracks thought with the part of his mind that could still form words. That’s my spark. It wasn’t something one usually saw, ever. Only the dying…no, this was not like that. This was purposeful. This was a sacred sharing. He leaned closer, chest to chest. 

Optimus’ hands were on him, Tracks supposed, only vaguely aware of anything external to his open chamber. Holding him, stroking him, guiding him. Entirely peripheral to the blaze of life and light within them, closer, closer, blinding as their outer fields meshed. Primus had sundered parts of himself to create the Thirteen, and all other sparks rose from his substance – now, for a moment, two of those parts would once again unite. 

Unity, wholeness, both of them utterly opened. Tracks cried out, there were things he would have hidden, if he knew how; but perhaps that was not possible. So much beauty! So much life! He was filled with it, energy and pattern and matter and the dancing void between particles, between stars. Things Tracks had escaped were accepted, set aside. Tracks as he was was embraced. 

And Tracks knew Optimus too. Knew everything. The Primes…

// **Hush** ,// said a voice within. // **He is himself, yet a part of him slumbers. Let him remain so.** //

Optimus’ body bowed beneath him, optics wide, starry black, mouth open but the words were only in Tracks’ mind, in his spark, echoing through his entire being. //I will,// he said, accepting a sacred charge. Their sparks whirled, blended, tendrils of light caressing one another in bliss. Tracks never wanted it to end. Was this what the Well was like? How could anyone bear to leave it? 

And yet there must come an ending. Outside, in his body, charge gathered, rose through him, surged. Their sparks blazed apart, ringing, stricken, like bells, sound filling their bodies, their mouths, overflowing in a wild chorus that seared the tiny cell—

\--and parted. Coalescing again into two beings, two sparks in two bodies.

.oOo0oOo.

Tracks came to slowly, system by system. He drank the energon Optimus handed him. They were curled together on the floor, everything closed and in its proper place, though pieces of Tracks’ armor still leaned haphazard in a corner.

“Are…” Tracks whispered, watching the complex inner workings of Optimus’ optics. “Are we the first people to have done this in…thousands of megacycles?”

“I don’t know.” And that was the full truth.

“Does Primus know?”

“If he does, then he does not seem to feel it necessary to grant me that knowledge.”

“Oh.”

Optimus smiled, nibbling on Tracks’ exploring fingertips. “Such a thing would be between the people directly involved, would it not?”

“Yes. I…yes.” Primus wouldn’t gossip about something like that.

“Is there anyone _you_ would feel comfortable sharing this with?” Optimus stroked his face, traced the complicated angles of Tracks’ white helm, like wings above his black face. There were flashes in his memory now of that face damaged horribly… No. This was not the time. He set it aside firmly.

Comfortable? Maybe not quite. “…Yes,” Tracks said reluctantly.

“Yes?”

“Springer.”

Optimus raised an eyebrow.

“He found me when I climbed here…that’s not everything, but that’s where it started. He’s so…so…” Tracks looked embarrassed, as though he was unused to being inarticulate.

“I see.” Optimus smiled, stroking Tracks’ back. “Hm. I cannot ping him from here.”

“No, comms don’t work well, unless you’re in the same room, which is silly. So mostly it’s just for gossip and…and meditation. Send him a moth.”

“What’s a moth?”

“They’re tiny, like energon bees, but they have bigger, powdery or scaly wings. There’s a cluster or three that live here but they live in many high places throughout Cybertron – wafting in the strong winds to establish new clusters. They can carry simple messages and we’ve trained the clusters here for generations to be good at it. You call them like this…” He whistled, very high, almost at the edge of hearing. Something tiny fluttered into the cell from the open window. It alit on Tracks’ hand and he spoke to it. It fluttered off and out the window again.

“I think I’ve seen them around Prowl.”

“Oh yes. They like him and Beachcomber especially for some reason.”

After some pleasantly passed time, at a tap the door opened, revealing the big rotor-mech, who leaned in to assess the situation before stepping inside. Optimus sat on the floor, parallel to the berth. Well, he was too big to fit, so that wasn’t a surprise. One arm was resting up on the berth, into which Tracks was curled, though he sat up once Springer entered. Both of them had removed their breastplates, and Tracks was missing his midline ventral lamés and pauldrons as well. Huh. Kinky. Tracks’ thighs and ventrum were liberally daubed with blue. So they’d got that far at least.

“Optimus,” Springer said, taking another step inside so the door could close behind him.

“Thank you.” Optimus’ optics twinkled at him, entirely mortal and blue and kind.

Springer nodded, grinning. Like he was going to refuse that kind of request. “Hey there, Tracks,” he said, sitting on the berth next to the much smaller mech. “Decided you like big ‘bots, huh?” He slipped an arm around Tracks’ shoulders and gave him a gentle squeeze. “Not that I’m protesting, but what’s with the breastplates?” Or lack thereof. Like everyone else, he’d seen the Prime stripped down for the first trial. Somehow, though, this partial reveal was even more…stirring. And Tracks, if he could be so bold as to say so (and he just might, give him a click), had a most comely endoform; headlights and running lights and biolights all glowing softly blue and gold, in appealing patterns across his intricate topology.

“We asked that you join us,” Optimus said, “because there is a particular practice Tracks would like to share with you.” Springer’s engine rumbled interestedly. 

Tracks met Springer’s gaze, face plates hot. “I like to…have my chest touched. It isn’t that I don’t like being touched…down there. Or other places. I just particularly enjoy…”

“Mmm. I can see why. Like this?” An excuse to stroke that nice endoform? Yes please!

“Oh. Oh yes…especially…yes right there! Oh Primus!” They both cast glances at Optimus, whose optics remained blue.

Tracks wasn’t exaggerating; Springer saw Tracks’ spike emerge, eager and pulsing, and he wondered how much more delightful all this groping would feel if his own breastplates were removed. “You do like being touched ‘down there’, too, hm?”

“Yes.” 

The sight of Tracks for the first time shyly opening his legs to him was one Springer would hold among the dearest in his memory core for the rest of his life. No matter how many more times he might see it, this first time moved him deeply. And he nearly overloaded from that alone. 

Springer rested his hands on Tracks’ inner cuisses, to keep himself from grabbing the smaller mech and pinning him to the berth. No, rough handling was definitely not on order here. Tracks’ valve sensor lights were lit so bright it seemed not a dark passage but a glowing one, energon-blue. Springer felt his own spike throbbing, his own valve quivering, aching to join with these parts so beautifully displayed to him. 

“He was wet the moment you walked in,” Optimus said, smiling. “Go on.” 

Springer got the feeling Optimus wanted to watch him, watch his face as he did this. Maybe wanted to watch Tracks’ face, too. Tracks was so open and yearning. Wanted Springer so much. It was making him so hard. 

Tracks’ valve was indeed slippery; Springer traced the rims – inner and outer were the same simple circular shape and nested close together – and put the barest fingertip inside. His spike lunged for the opening, he felt it like a physical jolt. But that sweet little spike was awfully inviting, too. He shifted position slightly, pulling Tracks’ hips closer, and fitted himself upon that bright spike, loving the feel of his friend’s heat inside him. 

The arch of Tracks’ frame drew attention to that finely made chest, so attractively tapered, biolights so vivid, the gracefully curving headlights so polished. Drew the optics, drew the hands. Springer’s hands were big and strong, and less blunt than they might have been. He traced lights from one to another, forming constellations across Tracks’ chest, enjoying the sight of his own hands there, and the way Tracks rippled and shivered under him, hot little spike twitching inside, and the soft moans coming from Tracks’ vocalizer. Nice voice, always thought so. Hot, so hot now to hear him in pleasure. Springer didn’t even have to circle his hips to build charge, watching Tracks, touching him, hearing him was doing it. 

He felt motion nearby, peripherally saw Optimus shift position. He looked up…into Optimus’ crotch, and an offered spike. Optimus straddled Tracks’ head, and Tracks was gazing at them, best angle, from below, and Springer lunged forward to take Prime’s spike into his mouth, moving one hand from Tracks’ chest – well slaggitall he only had the two hands – up Prime’s leg, to finger that hot, dripping valve. Tracks moaned louder, his spike thrashing inside Springer, little gold-tipped cables extending from around his headlights, twining with Springer’s fingers. 

“Mmmmmm…” Prime hummed, harmonics blending with the revving of three engines; two deep and powerful, one high-tuned, running fast and hot. Springer dandled the inquisitive little cable-tips and Tracks writhed, overloading, transfluid spraying up into Springer’s valve. Springer rode him down, gentling his hips’ circling, sucking hard on the tip of Prime’s spike even as he thrust his fingers harder into Prime’s valve, lubricant running down his hand and forearm. Optimus rolled his hips slightly, spreading his knees more, making sure Tracks could see everything – once Tracks’ optics came back online. 

Springer hadn’t been sure he could overload from sucking spike, but he soon would be. Prime thrust into his mouth carefully, as much riding Springer’s fingers as fragging his mouth, and the two things together, along with the feel of Tracks’ hot transfluid dripping in his valve, was cranking him higher and higher, building charge deep in his frame like a heavy, solid weight, filling him with power and anticipation. Roiling, gathering…the hand at Tracks’ chest began to shake. His visual field narrowed to the hypnotic undulation of Prime’s ventrum, biolights drawing elliptical afterimages in his optics; and his other senses bloomed in his mind more vividly – scents of hot metal, transfluid, godsfluid, lubricant…Tracks’ unique oils and alloys, heated, aromatic – the soft shush of precision hydraulics, internal fans nearly useless but whirring away gamely, heavy venting, pleasured moans – the intricate smooth slide of his hand on Tracks’ chest, the slippery ridges within Prime’s valve, the grind of his knees on the stone floor (this not painful but something blessedly solid to brace against), the spread of his legs across Tracks’ pelvic span, exposing his inner hip workings to the cool air, the thick, hot spike sliding in his mouth – the taste of Prime’s lubricant and the extraordinary godsfluid on his glossa, swallowed like fine high-grade quintuple-distilled and powerful and yet like nothing else he’d ever tasted, rich and sweet, filling him with its taste somehow, as though his very armor and spark shared the sensation. 

He curled his hips forward, thrusting in counterpoint to Tracks’ bucking hips, his spike bouncing over Tracks’ ventrum, a droplet, then a rivulet of transfluid flowing from him as the massive charge gathered like a fist curling. 

Natural as though there had been some pre-arranged signal, they shifted position again, Prime and Springer; now both of them straddling Tracks’ chest, to slide their valves and spikes over the smaller mech’s endoform. Tracks arched and writhed, rubbing his chest up against them, moaning, praying unabashedly, clutching at their cuisses with unsteady hands. 

Prime leaned back, bracing his hands on his own ankles, hips gyring slow, then fast, then slow again, watching their spikes on Tracks’ lubricant-slicked body, watching Springer’s body move, watching Springer’s face; seeing how he was being watched in turn. Springer couldn’t hold it; blue waves of plasma rolled off his frame and he cried out, transfluid pulsing over Tracks’ chest, sleeking into the furrows between plates, rolling off the ridges, hot and iridescent and more of it at once than he’d ever seen come out of himself before. Tracks shuddered beneath them, overloading too, with Springer’s fields crashing through him like that, and Prime followed, head fallen back and a little smile on his face. 

They moved back, searching Tracks’ fields and face to make certain he was all right. He was. He swirled his fingers through the mingled silver and blue transfluids all over his body, gazing with hot optics up at Springer. Moaning, Springer bent down and began to lick. Tasting himself and that strange, dizzying godsfluid, wriggling his glossa into all Tracks’ secret little places, limning the central seam until Tracks shouted and came yet again, vibrating helplessly beneath him.

And suddenly Springer couldn’t stand it; he wanted to come inside Tracks while his tank still had a little transfluid in it. Scooting back and hipping between Tracks’ legs, he pushed into Tracks’ valve – aaah so hot – going slowly, feeling the inner mesh unspiral to take him in. Slow, slow, to feel every ridge and nub, these intimate, almost delicate parts of their bodies in full contact. His hips could never tire of circling into Tracks like this. He watched Optimus stroke Tracks’ body with his hands and spike, wandering now and then up to his face whenever Tracks opened his mouth, wanting a taste. 

Watching Tracks’ little glossa lapping at Prime’s big spike drove a flash of pleasure through his body bright as an ion pulse. Springer pushed in deep as he could, armor and rims chiming as they slid and held, and transfluid gushed from and into and through and around them, a galaxy of spinning, blinding light at their center until the axis wobbled and everything exploded. 

…

Someone – Tracks! – squirmed. Beneath him. Springer leapt up, the great coils in his legs reacting instinctively to his alarm. He was crushing his little friend! His optics focused at last and there was Tracks, unhurt, humming softly. Prime helping him to sit up, settling behind him like a large, warm chair, nuzzling the top of his helm. 

“The thing I wanted to share with you,” Tracks said, “is actually…my spark.” He parted his chest-plates, just enough to let the light shine through. Watching Springer’s face, feeling his fields carefully. Anxious.

“Your…” Springer blinked, cocked his head. Sat down rather abruptly. “You…we can do that?” He wasn’t squeamish, not really. He’d seen bare sparks before, though usually under grim circumstances, or during battlefield repairs. There were Mysteries that the higher ranked nuns enacted, but he hadn’t learned those rituals yet. 

“Optimus says it is a very old, long abandoned practice.” Tracks placed his hands on Springer’s chest. “You don’t have to, if the idea bothers you. It’s just that…I’ve always felt it was…right somehow. And Optimus showed me how, and it was…oh, Springer, it was amazing! I don’t know how to describe it!”

“It is intense, and intensely personal,” Optimus said. “It requires complete trust.”

“And you two did it, huh?” Springer grinned. 

//Yes,// Tracks sent privately. //Sharing sparks means we would know each other, know things about each other. Deep things. Primus-made things. I don’t know if the things I learned about Optimus will be transferred to you or not. If you don’t want to take on that…responsibility? Just say so. I’ll understand! I have had the experience once now, and I can live the rest of my life with that alone if …if need be.//

“You think I’d shy away from something like that?” Springer leaned in to kiss him. 

//I’m not the only one who _fled_ here,// Tracks said, cupping his face. //I know the strictures. We don’t ask, we don’t tell others something gifted us in confidence, but I know there are others with horrors in their pasts that they don’t want to think about, let alone share.// He’d seen how Jazz flinched away from physical contact from anyone but Prowl. He’d seen the shamed look flicker across Blurr’s face the first time someone commented on how fast he talked. Ratchet’s occasional withdrawn silences. Bluestreak chattering more than Cliffjumper. Drift’s fields collapsing, failing sometimes when he was tired. Wheeljack burying himself in work to avoid getting too close to anyone. Springer had his silences, too, Tracks knew. Pain in his optics now and then, whether physical or otherwise Tracks wasn’t sure, as Springer reacted with stoicism to both. 

//Don’t,// Springer said, kissing him with renewed tenderness. //Don’t for a click think I’d keep anything from you now. Covering old wounds only lets them corrode faster.// He parted his chest armor…no, better yet, get it off all the way…his spaulders stuck and Prime had to help him with the stiff latches in back. Springer shrugged and shivered, bare to the waist. 

“Kinda cold,” he said, rubbing his central seam, his face warming as he saw how Tracks was staring at him. He scooted in closer. “How do we do this, exactly?” He’d never actually opened his endoform himself before, the medibots always did it when he was… He firmly put the rest of that set of memories aside. 

“Like this,” Tracks whispered, snuggling up to him, his own chest and chamber now wide open, drawing Springer’s optics and mind irresistibly to that pulsing brightness. Mouths an inch apart, Tracks transmitted the command string’s location in his own programming, supposing it – correctly – to be similar in Springer’s case for all their differences in frame. 

“Hmm.” Springer closed his optics. He’d always been good at physical things. Even this thing which would make him even more vulnerable, he was determined to accomplish. He felt the command take hold, his back arch slightly as heavy panels and spars of endoform slid over one another, opening him. Just a narrow band at first, then wider, wider, until Tracks’ face was bathed in blue radiance. 

A presence approached, near, not yet touching, but close, powerful despite its smallness. The presence had a name, a sound associated with it, and Springer knew that sound, knew his own sound echoing in return. Nearer. Waves and shells of energy overlapped, filled with concepts and words, sound and glyph, without meaning until joined with others in a glowing net, a matrix spreading out around him, them, together. 

So much beauty! Love, yearning, precious life, their little sparks fierce children of their creator’s vastness. Here in this place where two were one they knew all the truth they needed; bliss and exultation winding, spiraling around them, through them in a deepening tide, the metal of their bodies alive with it, every particle of them re-aligning their spin, until the whole sang one song, creator and created, immeasurable and finite. Bodies and sparks and minds they joined in holy trinity, three by three by three – until the illimitable being cupped his awareness around the two to shelter them, let their pleasure rise with his own for just as long as they could endure and no longer, bodies and minds and sparks all at once sharing in full summation. Their vision seared bright, then blessed dark.

Springer stirred, aware in stages. He seemed to have two sparks, feel the low purr of two engines. Just an echo, and the sensation was already fading. Tracks lay on his chest, warm, optics bright, not quite a smile curled at the corner of his mouth. As they woke, bit by bit the new knowledge the merge allowed them coursed through their processors, surfacing in their conscious minds at a rate they could handle without distress.

//A Wrecker?// Tracks attempted to sound horrified, but couldn’t quite manage it. Vandals, vigilantes the world called them. Tracks understood better now. They were a wild bunch, the Wreckers, for sure for certain, but they roved from the need for freedom, and they embraced anyone – anyone! – who could keep up. And here was Springer himself, wholesparkedly of the Order, gallant and compassionate and determined. A powerful warrior turned guardian, devoted to the pursuits of knowledge and loving kindness. 

//That’s me.// Springer gestured, an impudent salute, then rested both hands back on Tracks’ aft, where they belonged. Oh, if Wrecker was the only secret Tracks had seen…

Tracks’ fields wavered.

//Ah. So you know that too.// 

//Your tail rotor!//

//Yeah. Ratchet fixed it, more or less.// Amazing, that had been. The pain wasn’t gone, but even a little less had been such a relief Springer’s knees would have buckled if he had been bipedal at the time. And now, after so many stellar cycles of therapy the pain was down 72 percent. Springer woke every morning astonished and more grateful than he had words to express. It was a defect he had worked his entire life to hide. The Wreckers, close-knit as they were, would not have understood. You had to carry your own mass, or get left behind. Probably with no rancor, except that he knew a lot of them would have been angry at being lied to. Too much time had passed. He could never tell them now, even if he rejoined their number. 

But here was Tracks, who was simply concerned for his pain. Who loved him. Who wanted to help, or at least share the burden. Someone he never had to hide anything from again.

Someone with his own secrets, now also shared.

//Forget my slagging rotor, Tracks! You…!// If Springer ever got target lock on that monster, Shockwave…

//Yes. He gave me wings, then tried to take them away.// Shockwave had tried to build a new kind of Seeker. A less headstrong kind. A less ambitious kind. A grounder should have been grateful. A grounder should have been more careful which neighborhoods he wandered alone. Especially a grounder who was among the generations who were little better than drones. T-63 had never even spoken, until Shockwave – in tank mode – had named him after the first word he screamed as he was run down. 

//But you kept the name.//

//Yes.// Tracks smiled. //I escaped. I survived. After everything he did to me, that was my self, my voice. And it was a better name than T-63.// He trailed a finger down Springer’s central seam. //And maybe it can mean different things now.//

Springer laughed, kissed Tracks’ forehelm. Another thread of knowledge percolated through.

//The Thirteen!// Springer said. //Optimus is—!//

//You mustn’t tell. Primus himself asked me not to reveal it, especially to Optimus. He doesn’t remember, Springer; he knows himself only as Orion Pax.//

//For now,// Springer replied, understanding, patterns that the future might take folding and unfolding between them. Then set aside. //Better, I guess, that he doesn’t recall? Who wants to find out they’re _that_ old?// 

Tracks laughed. //Kup would be sparkbroken not to be eldest!// 

Springer snorted, picturing his dear but crotchety mentor’s reaction. For Optimus… Springer sobered a little. Optimus would find out for himself, at the time he needed to. 

//Yeah, I gotcha,// Springer said. And he did, and Tracks knew he did, their sparks sharing the warm, sacred secret between them, bobbing and spinning, whirls of energy giddy with the feel of each other, reaching deep, embracing their best selves, glowing with wonderment at their potential yet to be reached. 

//Pretty smart, for a Wrecker,// Tracks teased.

//You shush!// Springer said, rolling them over, both of them giggling, hands getting under what armor was left, finding ticklish spots. The realization struck both at the same time.

They looked around like young novices caught out on the rooftops, but Optimus had left them. Grinning, they delved back into each other.

.oOo0oOo.

Sunrise glittered on the sharp edges of the simple but pleasing architecture, columns and arches and curving walls pierced by oval or round windows, the corundum stone glowing in the horizontal light with rich colors usually hidden in their depths.

It was a liminal time for the Order. Not all of them were virgin any more. The True Bearer had been found, and they were, for the first time since Founding, going to leave the Sanctuary with him. They were preparing, but had not departed yet. Arcee felt impatience and anticipation, but also vexation that their – relatively – peaceful way of life had been disrupted. Aside from the initial attacks by Megatron’s forces two stellar ago, and occasional Seeker incursions, the Order had been left alone for gigastellars. Historical warlords had occasionally tried their fortifications, but had found little value in attacking a hardened target with no reward but bragging rights. 

There he was. Stalking through the cloister below, as though scenting for unbroken seals. He could move eerily silent for such a big ‘bot. He had things to learn, though, about evading, losing, or drawing out a tail; she knew the exact moment when he became aware of her. He didn’t freeze, or start, or look about, but there was a telling pause in his motion, and he changed direction, circling around toward her while leaving her plenty of avenues of escape. 

Fine for the current circumstances, but for a wartime general? No wonder Megatron’s rebels were picking the Prime’s followers off like targets in the midway games at Six Lasers. Remedy enough for that in the Order. With Elita, Prowl, and Ultra Magnus putting their minds to the problem, neither the Senate forces nor the rebels would know what hit them. 

She grinned at herself. She was doing some evading here which wasn’t really what she wanted. With a somersaulting leap, she left her rooftop perch and landed in a crouch on a buttress of the outer parapet, just outside the cloister. 

“Hello, Arcee,” he said, approaching, his hands clasped firmly behind his back. 

Primus, that voice. Maybe she could get him to speak into her valve…

“Bearer.”

She spread her knees as she noted his direction of interest. It wasn’t just the morning sunlight warming her plating. She opened her panel as he moved to the parapet, touched the sleek planes of her sabatons. 

Heat and charge shivered through her at the contact. She curled her back, thrusting her hips forward, watching him intently, lips parted on hot venting. He licked the edges of her interface array, circling tanzanite seals bright with jagged, braided formations of polished copper, dotted with star enstatite, ringed with Primus blue. He traced the intricate knotwork patterns with the tip of his glossa, enjoying the bright tang of the copper, and her low hissing moans. She held still as the stone she perched on. 

He wrapped his hands around her thighs, licking more firmly, around the outer rims, pressing his glossa into the valve seal, feeling it bend; running his glossa over the bulge of the spike seal, sucking on it gently as Arcee gasped. She wrapped her hands around his helm, grinding herself against his mouth – hot with venting from his core, slick, open wide to encompass both seals at once, glossa flicking hard as she dug the tips of her fingers into his neck cables. She cried out as her spike pushed free, and he slipped his glossa through her valve seal at the same moment, open and clear, surging with fluids and charge. 

The world spun for a moment as he pulled her down off the parapet, her legs finding their way over his shoulders, one of his hands enough to cup her aft, the other exploring the edges of her winglets. Her spike never left his mouth. Her center of gravity felt wrong, and the white-hot points of contact drowned all other thoughts. 

She fitted her body around his helm, thrusting at first wildly, then settling into a smooth glide, her focus on her spike, the heat of his mouth, the slick stroking of his glossa over every ridge and sensor and segment, closing down around it now and then to feel the pressure of the fluid inside, held in check until she allowed herself to overload.

Which would be soon. She could go deep in meditation, and hold it for an entire solar cycle; but this was different. This wasn’t the secret, contained inner surge. This was parts of her out in the open, the wind blowing cold over tender plates, fluids dripping from her, a sensation in her valve both strange and tantalizing as the inner mesh rippled and clenched. 

“Mmmmm…”

Arcee bit back a cry – and then her vocalizer fritzed, hot, cascading licks of static rolling over her armor, things inside her clamping down and seething and hot welling surging through the tip of her spike, cavitation and vibration sending her through the cycle again before the first had completed. She curled hard around his helm, ankles crossed behind his upper back, realizing the ungentle grip of her hands only gradually, and just as gradually easing it. His hands were so big on her body. So warm. He gave no sign of wanting to put her down, still applying gentle suction on her throbbing spike. 

Primus, he was going to suck her dry before she…pulling out reluctantly, she climbed down his body, finding that he’d knelt by the base of the parapet wall. A light shove was all it took to get him to lie back, spreading those nice ventral plates just enough to offer interesting gaps to small fingers and a glossa like hers. He made appreciative noises, arching and twisting as she explored. She let one hand wander – not really by accident – downward to find his spike. Not really difficult to find as the thing was bigger than her forearm. She stroked it, liking the way it pulsed in her hand, the hot slipperiness of it, the blue sensor lights along its length bright even in daylight. 

He propped himself up on his elbows, drawing one knee up, splaying the other sideways; peering over the bulk of his chest to watch her, his optics suspiciously darker than usual. Primus had him, or nearly. 

She laid her hands on his open thighs, at the tops of his cuisses, taking in the feast spread before her. The heat rising from his valve made her whole body ache, her spike throbbing to be taken within, enveloped. But one part of meditation was prolonging this delicious ache. With one hand she again stroked his spike, copying each motion with the other on her own spike, shuddering at the oddly doubled sensations. Her hands, her body, his body. Rubbing her thumb over the tip felt jarringly good. Firm strokes up and down the shaft were somehow deep-body pleasurable but not sharply so, not enough to drive the climb toward overload. Her hips began to thrust in counterpoint to her hand, and she leaned closer, mouth open, optics half-shuttered. 

Their fields mingled, intimate and powerful. The scent of his lubricants, and lingering godsfluid, distracted her, drew her closer still, venting hot over the sensitive tip of his spike. He vented sharply, let his head fall back for a moment, fingers clenching against stone. His hips shifted minutely, then relaxed, and he gazed again at her, optics moonsrise-dark. 

She extended her glossa. A droplet of lubricant quivered at the emission port, glinting in the early morning sunlight. Glossa-tip to droplet, surface tension, strange fluidic properties bridging them, mingling the liquids in her mouth, the taste alight like a running fuse – she vented deep… then lapped it up, sucking the tip of his spike as far into her mouth as would fit. 

“Mmmm!” he purred again, and she felt it across her entire body. Mouth to spike-tip, burring through her very spark, mingling the frequencies of his voice with the wavelengths of her innermost light. 

She let her head fall back, rubbing her chest against his spike, and his purr was louder this time, and deeper. Her own spike throbbed, so close with her slight change of position to where it wanted to be. She wriggled her hips and looked down, watching herself enter him; a slim cable entering, so she thought at first, a cannon bore, and she bit her lips to keep from giggling. But then his valve spiraled tight, snugging right down around her, accepting her with its warm, wet embrace; and she wriggled harder, gasping, too lost in sensation for a moment to thrust in a coordinated way. 

The motion was simple enough, and her hips’ wild swings swiftly became slow, tight ellipses, rubbing the tip of her spike hard up against his ceiling nodes, riding out his shudders of pleasure and the jinking of his hips. 

Why the common insistence on speed in thrusting, though? Slow going was bliss; she could feel every ridge and whorl and sensor bump, she could feel the slightly higher temperature of the internal biolights. No sense in dismissing what she hadn’t tried. Faster it was.

And then she understood. The friction, the movement, metal on metal built up _charge_ , which their bodies knew what to do with, to keep it from interfering with their proper functioning. But when charge built hot and fast, connected deep through valve and spike to the core – static flickered across her armor, pulling on her fields, tugging in subtle directions on all her moving parts. Petting her from the inside out. 

She bared her dentae, thrusting faster still, feeling the charge crawl up her ventrum, across her chest, her spark whirring high and hot, unhearing to her own gasps – and then Optimus’ valve writhed around her spike, pulling her in further, harder, and there was nothing in her processor but blinding pleasure. 

Climax eased into a languorous, serpentine sway, her spike yet erect, swimming in her own transfluid within his valve, stirring, overflowing now and then as he clenched in reflex or she thrust with renewed vigor. 

A familiar energy signature teased the edges of her range. Aha. Cliffjumper. Thought he was sly. Watching them. He’d already been taken; his spike was out, partially erect and waving cheekily at her. She canted her hips to show off her valve and plunged her spike into the Prime with renewed vigor. If Cliff had the struts he’d be over here in a—

—Oh yes, yes! Cliffjumper’s spike swelled and filled her, slick and hot from behind and Arcee made hard, circular motions with not just her hips but her entire spinal assembly, grinding primal cries between her denta. Optimus grabbed her and held her still for half a click and there was a whirr and a tap and oh Primus that spinning sensation around her spike was _amazing_ and then behind her Cliffjumper arched and gave a high, keening moan and Arcee guessed correctly that the Prime’s spike was stretching his valve so that now the three of them were bound in a tight little circuit, twitching and jerking with waves of heat and pleasure, lubricant smearing their bodies and legs, and Prime grinning there beneath them with his hands clasped behind his helm letting the nuns do all the bumpitty-bumping and she didn’t really blame him, grinning back. 

Neither nun knew which of them first started the slide; they both spurted and sprayed, pumping and splashing silver inside valves, spilling over everywhere, and tossing their heads with laughter and challenges until the ground, the Primus beneath them heaved upwards, spearing Cliffjumper with electric blue, and Cliff – after a bright, mindless, hot moment – got up, got out of the way and pulled on Arcee’s hips and pulled her down onto the still fountaining spike and watched her filled with godsfluid steaming and dripping down her narrow, sharp-edged legs. 

Giggling, languid, they fell upon the Bearer’s body, resting for only a moment before turning to the task of licking up every precious drop. His body, his spike, his legs; they spread him, sharing, glossae dueling over the deep well of his valve, their fingers dipping and playing in his fluids, rubbing circles around the tiny sensor lights inside, until he bucked and they hadn’t the mass to hold him down and were thus showered with a rain of blue. 

“Not to start anything,” said Optimus, amused, “but I can keep this up longer than you.”

Cliffjumper’s brows quirked. He looked down at his own spike, nestled contentedly in its housing, showing no sign of wakening for another round. He tilted his hips. Maybe if it saw the fine example Prime’s gleaming spike was setting? 

Arcee clonked him on the helm. “No, really, Cliff. He can.” There were other kinds of fun to be had, though, and, smiling, she dragged Cliff off to the great hall. 

…

They returned to the great hall to find Skyfire in there rolling around on the floor in a very interesting manner. Wings, arms, legs everywhere, and everyone was watching and grinning and whistling appreciatively while Skyfire arched and moaned and clawed at the floor. 

Arcee skirted around him – leaving Cliffjumper at the door, gaping, trying to process – hugging the wall until fetching up against Firestar and Inferno. From there she could see that Beachcomber was _in_ Skyfire’s valve – or most of him was – wriggling around and using the grav-resonance emitters in his feet. Skyfire shouted incoherent hymns, arms and wings spread in adoration, his spike a silver fount. 

Their ascetic – their Soliton – and their Anchor. Fitting, somehow, and they’d always been friends, though they rarely conversed directly; Beachcomber stayed on his pillar, Skyfire stayed in his anchorhold. Arcee leaned thoughtfully on Firestar, met Inferno’s fingers with her own in Firestar’s valve, all three of them watching raptly.

Giggling, moaning as he giggled, Beachcomber gyred his hips, rubbing his spike hard on a circle of anterior nodes in the forward wall of Skyfire’s valve, slippery with both their lubricants and Beachcomber’s transfluid. 

“Aaah, hmmm! Go on, Sky,” Beachcomber sang. “Shove me in deeper!”

“N-no…but…you…ohhhh…”

“We’re good – mmmmm! – just go ahead, yeah…” He gasped, venting hard, feeling two of Skyfire’s fingers curl over his shoulders – he tipped his head to kiss the side of one – and _push_. Gentle but steady; strong and even, and Skyfire’s valve drew him in farther, rippling as Beachcomber wriggled to get his hands inside where he could rub things; and he never stopped the action of his hips, his spike now pressed up against his own ventrum by the valve wall. Everything was slippery, but Skyfire’s fingers kept him in. 

The world spun; Skyfire rolling to his knees, one hand pressed flat to the floor, the other holding Beachcomber as he began to move his hips, lubricant arcing everywhere from between his legs. Huffer and Seaspray rushed over to rub their valves on the tip of Skyfire’s spike. 

Skyfire rolled his hips forward and back, a diving motion, as though sliding in and out of a fellow shuttle, bumping Huffer and Seaspray, who clung the tighter to the base of his spike. His valve rippled around Beachcomber, drawing him deeper yet; clenching, hot waves of lubricant spilling from him now, runnelling off the edges of Beachcomber’s helm and visor. The weight of the two small mechs on Skyfire’s spike pulled in a way he had never felt before, and he began to swing them faster, deepening the arc until he found a rhythm that had all four of them gasping and moaning in unison; at the nadir of each swing, where gravity assisted the most. 

“Hang on!” Seaspray caroled merrily, jouncing his own hips hard as he could. “It’s gonna be a gusher when he goes!” The two small mechs clung with arms and legs, positioning their valves near Skyfire’s emission port, ready. 

For a moment, Skyfire arched up and up, hovering, taking flight within the air of the hall, wings spread from window to window, the mechs on and in him gripping tightly and thrumming with shared tension – and then with a groaning roar, he collapsed onto his forearms, thunderous falls of transfluid flooding past Huffer and Seaspray’s valves, filling them, overflowing them, almost dislodging them but the pressure and vibration and hot liquid spray of it sent them into continuous overload; while inside his valve Beachcomber writhed, massaged and squeezed in rhythmic convolutions, all of his body powerfully stroked at once, his own transfluid mixing with the spurting lubricants that would have impelled him outward had Skyfire not held him there. 

Huffer and Seaspray tumbled to the floor and helped each other toddle away on shaking limbs as Skyfire slid onto his side, legs yet spread, and eased Beachcomber from his cocoon. 

“Thank you.” Skyfire cradled him against his cheek. Managed somehow to delicately kiss Beachcomber’s tiny mouth. 

“Whooaahoo!” Beachcomber waved arms and legs weakly, patted Skyfire’s chin in an uncoordinated way. “Haaooo! Waa…mmmyeah let’s do that again!” He curled against Skyfire’s thumb. “After a nap, hey?”

Skyfire nodded carefully and curled around him, creating a small world-sphere around just the two of them, safe within walls. 

Arcee shook herself and blinked, aware fully now as she hadn’t been before that Springer was lying beneath her, sort of idly sucking her spike, with his head tipped back far enough to watch the remarkable goings-on with their Anchor. Tracks was behind her, fingering his own chest and Springer’s valve; and watching Skyfire, optics wide. She smiled. 

“Well,” she said, “I wouldn‘t have thought of that, but it works!”

.oOo0oOo.


	5. Sanctuary II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Drift's turn. And Rung's...

In the lowest floor of the western wing, Optimus, following intuition or whatever other impulse urged him, found a wide room tiled in pale, rough stone, with a large circular pool in the center. An oil bath.

This had possibilities. And a hot soak would feel good in any case. He had no idea if his body would feel the strain of his activities over the last several solar cycles or not. A little preventative maintenance couldn’t hurt. There were wire brushes and metal scrubbing pads in niches along one wall; jars of solvents and polishes, buffing rounds, detailing files and picks. He considered his options, then simply stepped into the pool without preamble, without accoutrements, and sank in up to his chin. 

Rather more time later than he’d meant to allow himself, he opened his optics at the faint clank of footsteps on the tile. 

“I didn’t mean to disturb you,” Drift said.

“Mmm. Yes you did.” The Prime sat up, blinking in a flash of starry black before fading back to blue. “Your seals are intact.” He extended an arm, palm upward…

Drift froze.

“Do you intend to take Kup’s part?” Optimus asked gently, making no further move toward the young nun. “Retaining the strictures and your seals until the next True Bearer after I am gone?”

“I…” Drift wrapped his arms around his narrow middle. “I thought about it.” He took a step nearer. “I asked Kup. Talked to Magnus. They said…said I didn’t have to. Not every iteration of the Order does that.” He hugged himself tighter, but his optics were bright, lasered on the Prime’s. “And I’m…” Another step took him to the edge of the pool. “…I’m…” He let his arms fall to his sides, let his interface panel open. “…Not that good.”

There was a splash and Optimus gave a roar of laughter and found himself with a sudden armful of white-armored Drift. Hot kisses and hot hands and hot bodies in the hot, slick oil. Drift’s body was sleek and lithe in his hands, wriggling against his greater mass delightfully, getting a leg between Optimus’ legs, brushing not even remotely by accident against Optimus’ panel. 

Hands that beneath phalangeal armor were still the hands of an archivist roamed up and down Drift’s back and sides, tracing seams, following warmth from major energon lines beneath, finding the sensitive gap just beneath the great-sword’s bracket. Drift gasped, arching as Optimus’ fingertips circled the spot, then shuddered, partitioning charge to stem overload, sinking down into the oil, legs sliding open around Prime’s hips. 

“That’s a very old sword, is it not?” Optimus asked, his lips close to Drift’s, hands wandering down to stroke the edges between Drift’s front and rear cuisses, exploring the bosses protecting the pin of the knee hinges, lingering here and there but heading for the warmer territory of highly enervated ankle complexes and wheels. 

“Yes,” Drift gasped.

“Very powerful.” He dipped his head farther, slipping his glossa into Drift’s open mouth, licking in and out, teasing the tip of Drift’s glossa as he would the tip of a spike. 

It was going to be too much. Drift wanted to be able to focus, to pay full and worthy attention to every sensation and emotion. He wanted to let Optimus feel the way he had felt during the trial. Connected at a fundamental level to their Creator and all his Creations, whirling, vast, at a dizzying height, surrounded by life and great unfathomable deeps. Filled to overloading with joyous pleasure. 

“Yes,” Drift said. He pushed Optimus’ hands away, because he wanted them on his body so much it was distracting. He couldn’t concentrate. Optimus leaned back, rested his arms on the rim of the bath, spread wide for Drift’s enjoyment and exploration. Like in the trial, when Optimus had not been allowed to touch, only to allow himself to be touched. Drift shivered with inner heat, remembering, though he himself had hardly gotten as far as touching. 

“The sword is very ancient,” he said. “But I didn’t know that when I…stole it.” He lifted his face to Optimus’. “Ultra Magnus says it was more like the sword stole me.” He’d had no idea what he was going to do with the thing, after, so maybe Ultra Magnus was right. 

Optimus chuckled, optics midnight-blue. “No doubt it felt that way the moment you touched it.” 

“Yes!” Drift was saying that a lot, he realized. True and fitting. “How did you kn—…oh.” Optimus, once Orion, would know all about artifacts that chose their bearers. He laughed. And leaned in just that little bit closer for a kiss. Optimus liked kissing, he remembered that.

“Can we…?” Drift murmured, between kisses, a little while later, because he’d forgotten for a bit what they’d been talking about. “Can we talk about the sword sometime? After. Later. Because I do want to, but right now _oh_ …”

“I shall look forward to it,” Optimus said. His body moved against Drift’s, and his arms moved on the edge of the bath, his hands clenching now and then, reminding himself to stay put, when all he wanted to do was wrap himself around Drift, coax every delighted cry from him, stoke and then ease the heat he could feel in the nun’s body. 

It was hard to remember what he’d meant to do, with Optimus’ body rising and rumbling and purring at him the way it was. Drift kept kissing him, because he liked it, but then he forgot how long his hands had been just there, just cupping the Bearer’s audials. Their sparks thrummed, the jewel in his sword thrummed, but Drift kept standing there, his feet outside Prime’s thighs. He felt the connection building, and it was solid, would not disperse if he slid down to kiss more parts of Optimus than his mouth. 

Broad chest, angled to deflect energy or blows, small biolights along the top. Complicated, faceted spaulders, the Autobot sigil emblazoned on the starboard side. Optimus made small, encouraging sounds whenever Drift found sensitive places, like the edges between chestplate and inner spaulder, and the seam between chestplate and backplate. Narrowing ventrum, with its tessellated plates and small, paired lights, and an interesting boss at the top center, which made Optimus arch and shiver when Drift caressed it. 

Beneath the oil, Optimus’ waist narrowed yet more, and the blue faulds curved over his hip gimbals, framing…framing what couldn’t be ignored now. Drift knew he was staring, knew he’d forgotten to move again. He’d seen this during the trial, but now he…

Optimus rose from the oil, sitting on the tiled edge, leaning back with legs spread, offering everything. Drift caught his balance on the step where Optimus had been sitting, swaying forward, placing his hands on Optimus’ thighs. Staring at the oil and lubricant-slick spike, the valve running with fluid. His mouth felt strange, and he opened it, wanting so much, so fiercely, all at once, everything at once…

Stillness. Patience. Drift did know what these things were. He drew back, not physically, but mentally. He had time. He had permission.

He stroked the shaft, just that, a simple thing. The ridges and whorls felt good under his fingers, the biolights little spots of heat. He liked the way Optimus’ hips shifted slightly, the way he was thrusting just a little bit into his hand. Optimus’ head fell back, his big frame relaxing and tensing, relaxing and tensing, and Drift became aware his own body was doing the same. He bent his knees, canted his hips back, keeping his array distant for now, just for a little while. Lowering himself let him see all of Prime’s array.

Drift stared at the lubricant shimmering in Prime’s valve. There because of what he was doing, the way he was touching Prime. He was allowed there now. He could touch there. That place, that well, that deepness everyone had. He placed his other hand, the one not stroking Prime’s shaft, high up on Prime’s cuisse, near where it curved in toward his hip gimbal, the workings of the joint partially exposed by his position. Prime shifted his hips slightly, venting a little faster. Drift had never touched anyone like this before, had never touched anyone like he was about to. He traced the outer rim of Prime’s valve with his thumb.

Lubricant poured forth, clearing the last of the oil, the interior lights glittering in the stream of it, and Drift could see the inner mesh clench. 

He moaned softly. He hadn’t meant to and bit his lips, but the surge of heat and heavy churning down between his own legs had caught him off guard. He had better discipline than this, he really did! Clear fluid beaded at the tip of Prime’s spike but Drift kept stroking the shaft, glancing between the droplet and the twitching valve, his hands so near both, his face near. He ran his thumb around the valve ring again, slid three fingers inside, watching as the droplet at the spike’s tip doubled in size and dripped down the curve of the underside, over his hand, hot against the thinner plating there.

Prime might have made a sound, but Drift could only hear his own engine’s rumble, his own fans roaring, his own venting catch and resume deeper and faster than before. His hips moved in unconscious imitation as he stroked the inner valve mesh – fingers clasped tightly in that liquid heat – and the shaft together, his mouth opening wider, so near the tip, but he was still watching everything that was happening, every ripple of armor as the Bearer’s body moved under his hands. Lubricant ran between his fingers in Prime’s valve. He pushed them in deeper, exploring, pressing in circular patterns. He swept his other thumb across the broad ridge that ran down the underside of the spike, up and over and back again, and Prime thrust into his touch, moans turning perhaps to words, if Drift could translate them over the sound of his own body. But Drift leaned that last span closer and licked the running stream from the spike’s tip, the clear taste spreading over his glossa as he lapped the tip into his mouth entirely, feeling the heat and the thrumming of pressure and hot liquid contained and faint hints of other flavors in his mouth and on his lips and he wished he could take more of it, and slid his glossa along the underside, rubbing it as he had with his thumb, and Optimus spoke again and Drift must have understood this time without thinking for when the surge came, the heave of Prime’s hips and the gush of hot, glowing blue-silver came as Drift wanted it to, spilling over his cheek plates and down his chin but also down his intake, godsfluid flowing into him and over his hand, and his other hand held wrist-deep by Prime’s writhing valve. 

Drift made sounds, too, faintly aware but not caring amid the tumult of his body. He thrust in the oil, kissing and sucking avidly, dizzy with it, hand pushing in and out of Prime’s valve as the clenching shuddered and released. The spike remained erect and he shifted both hands to it, squeezing, petting, running slender fingertips up and down and around, wanting more of the intoxicating godsfluid, licking up any streams of it he could find. 

His own array was awash behind his seals, he could feel it moving as he moved, counterpoint to the waves his thrusting made in the bathing oil, heightened by the slap of those waves on the pool walls, echoing in the tiled chamber. Every movement beneath the surface of the oil set up waves he could feel over and under his armor, rhythmic, steady, like their chants sometimes, in meditation, the small movements of hands or hips they were allowed, knees wide on cold stone floors.

It was all right, he reminded himself. This body, these bodies, his and Optimus’, were there to find pleasure in. His seals weren’t even broken yet. They were both permitted release now. He could climax more than once, it didn’t have to be over after the first. His transfluid tank was full…more than full, now that he was paying attention. That hot, heavy, fluidic movement within him, down low in his chassis, ached for relief, and yet the denial of complete release was so delicious. 

Prime lifted Drift up and sat him on the edge of the pool, pushing his legs wide, humming in pleasure at the sight of the young nun spread out and wanting attention. 

“I thought Primus gave you…?”

“The scans of your seals, yes.” Optimus moved his thumb in slow circles over the tense dome in Drift’s spike seal, and Drift squirmed, clamping a hand over his mouth to keep himself – he hoped – from making an embarrassing squeak. “But I’ve found I like touching them; the textures, the heat. And I like watching each of you as I touch them. And I like the taste of them, of you. They have all been so beautiful, I have not wanted to miss the experience of them, even once I knew I had the records.” He cupped Drift’s aft, moved his mouth down to where his hand had been, glossa flicking the seals softly, then sharply, almost hard enough to wring a chime from the thin membranes of metal. Drift clawed at the stone floor, desperately trying to keep his body and especially his hips still, and not succeeding. “I like licking people here,” Optimus continued softly, his voice down in its lowest, most resonant register, purring against Drift’s sensitive parts. “It is a simple gift of pleasure. MmmmmMMMmm…”

Drift lost it, scrabbling and writhing on the tile as things surged and churned hot inside him; and he knew what those things were but could not at that moment bring the words to mind, plasma arcing in his mouth and across the points of his armor as he came. Optimus pulled him gently back into the bath as his systems reset. 

Prime’s spark hummed beneath his cheek. Drift thought of the Matrix, bright between himself and that spark, its harmonics resonating to Optimus’. Not just the carrier, the regent, but the True Bearer; a spark fully compatible with the sacred relic, a part of Primus’ own spark. All of them were shards, though; all of them climbed from the Well, emerging upon the surface of Primus’ body. Drift’s body lay sprawled over Prime’s, hips rocking gently in synch with…oh. 

Optimus’ thumb moved inside him, in and out, stroking his inner mesh while Drift rocked against his hand; his spike still contained but his valve now free, feeling every current and eddy in the oil around them, feeling the temperature gradient as a delightful strangeness, his inner core so much hotter. 

He felt Prime’s spike brushing between his legs, and with a low moan he pulled himself down onto it, until only his face was above the surface, the rest of him submerged and cocooned, as his valve unspiralled to envelop the thick shaft. Prime wrapped his hands around Drift’s thighs and thrust slowly, measured and even, the way that had driven Hot Rod so wild. Drift understood now the fierce ache, the desperate need for release and at the same time longing for it never to end, to stay on the heated climb forever. 

His spike swelled in its housing, burgeoning with each slow thrust, until with an almost agonizing kind of stretch/pop/ _sting_ it pushed free, through its seal. He looked down, leaning back to see; to his surprise it was stellate like Hot Rod’s – though Drift’s valve was the simple circle most people’s were – and it waved languidly in the oil, expanded to its greatest diameter, blazingly sensitive. Just the swirling of the oil sent waves of pleasure through his body, colliding with the slow undulations of Prime’s spike in his valve. How do people not die of this? Drift wondered. How do they ever make themselves stop doing it? There was a catch, deep inside, and a bending, and a hot, molten something churned through and out of him, gushing, pulsing in time with Optimus, thrusting faster, the waves slapping at the sides of the pool, but all Drift heard clearly was the roar of his engine and the energon blazing in his lines.

“Mmmmm, Drift,” Optimus hummed, slowing as Drift’s optics fell closed. “This is wonderful. I have never interfaced in an oil bath before.” With pressure from his hands he encouraged Drift to move his hips in wider circles, grinding harder. Optimus curled his own hips forward a little, spreading his thighs to give Drift a broader base. “The idea simply never occurGLURPH!” 

Optimus’ aft slipped out from under him and they both went under, Drift riding him down giggling as Optimus’ feet kicked ineffectually above the surface for a moment before he got his hands properly braced to bring them up again, both laughing, and sputtering a bit at oil in the intakes. Laughter merged into cuddling, as Optimus – with his hands – made certain Drift had not been injured in any way, no matter in how small a part. Cuddling turned into determined necking. 

Wary of a repeat mishap, Optimus lifted him onto the edge of the pool again, rising over him, the oil sheeting from their bodies, pushing him down to gaze at him a moment, venting hard, legs spread, before bowing to worship with hands and lips and glossa. 

Drift felt the heaviness of him, the pressure of the air and heat as he moved over him; felt the slow kisses trail up his body, and as Optimus’ lips closed over Drift’s left finial-tip, felt the inquisitive, wet nudge of Prime’s spike between his legs. Drift spread his knees wider, lifting his hips, writhing as the spike nuzzled at his array. Primus! How he could get any wetter than he already was, Drift had no idea. But his spike throbbed and extended, serpentine against his ventral plates, and his valve swelled, pulsing and fluttering with a need so sharp it ached. Their lubricants spread a sheeny, iridescent film over the surface of the oil, mingling with metallic splashes and streamers of transfluid, drawing strange glyphs over their bodies. 

Prime’s spike brushed his valve, nudging the inner rim, everything slippery, but Prime shifted his hips, angling upward, and it was his valve that slid down over Drift’s spike, heavy and hot, clasping and claiming. 

Optimus reared up, rhythm never flagging, hands caressing down Drift’s body, the motion continued up his own, lingering on cuisses and faulds, slow up the center of his own ventrum – Drift watched, panting, holding on to the rim of the pool, dizzy with the throbbing in his valve, with the astonishing constriction and heat of Prime’s valve plunging on his spike – slower still up the center of his broad, red chest. Fingertips lingered on the central seam, and Drift moaned, feeling the energies whorl and wheel and light and power spilled as the Bearer opened himself, and Drift overloaded hard at his second sight of the Matrix, the primordial shard, with the desire of Primus himself overflowing from it, and from Prime’s spike, bathing him in a rush of hot godsfluid.

The air felt cool against Drift’s retracting spike as Optimus lifted himself, bowing down over him, kissing him, fondling his spike back into its housing. He felt himself carried, cuddled, big hands on his body, powerful arms around him, petting, smoothing his armor. The kisses wandered, turned to licking, sucking, but gently, soothing rather than rousing. His own hands flopped at his sides and his fans and pumps struggled to cool him. Prime spread his legs, drinking at his valve and Drift twitched, an incoherent jolt of noise strangled in his throat, his hands grasping blindly at Prime’s helm, then falling again to his sides. An overload in slow motion, rolling through him inexorable as a moon, smearing his perceptions together until light and sound blended, and he could no longer tell haptic touch from field. 

Optimus carried the dazed nun a little farther from the pool, and arranged his limbs more comfortably. He smiled, and bent to place one more kiss on the angular helm-crest. Blue optics swam fuzzily, then flickered, shuttered, went out. 

Prime immersed himself in the pool briefly, then climbed out, all his parts in order, a low warmth already anticipating the next initiation.

The bathing pool, he considered, pausing at the threshold and looking back at the generous chamber, was far too large for any one mech, even Skyfire. It was, therefore, communal. The nuns would bathe together, could watch each other attend in graceful, purposeful ways to their bodies. And yet were forbidden interface. Until now. 

For how long? How long did each True Bearer attend them, before the cycle began again? No doubt it varied, but the earliest mentions of the Solian Order that Orion Pax had been able to find were eons old and yet portrayed the Order as having been established so long previously it was “beyond memory.” It could conceivably go back to the earliest tribal groups; after all, there were people alive, so Alpha Trion had said once, very late one night, who had been Patterners, and yet in all likelihood did not remember being so. 

Memory was a curious thing.

Further contemplation was interrupted, however, as Prowl came along the curve of the hall bearing a flask of energon. 

“Thank you,” Optimus said. “Though I hardly feel I need it. How goes…?”

“Our preparations are modest in complexity, and well under way,” Prowl said, smiling. His optics glowed, both trying not to stare and unabashedly admiring. “There’s been an acid storm winding around Iacon and down into the Torus States. Skyfire says it looks like the sort to continue for several days.” His smile widened. “It seems the war will wait for us a while yet.”

.oOo0oOo.

Optimus found Rung in the infirmary, assisting Ratchet with the packing of supplies.

“I will retain my seals,” Rung said, taking Optimus’ hands, smiling peacefully. “I have watched many of the initiations and find that my body is…unmoved. Despite Kup’s assurance, I think one of us should remain chaste, to help the next generation of the Order if necessary.”

“I have nothing but respect for your decision,” Optimus said gravely. Rung, he suspected, was sequestra. Another ancient type, like Tracks’ preference for spark-sharing. Their functions had been lost to time, leaving them outcast, or perceived as dangerously deviant. No wonder they had found sanctuary in the Order. 

“Be assured,” Rung said, optics twinkling, “I find pleasure in many other pursuits. Interfacing is simply not one of them.”

Optimus smiled. “As you wish.” He squeezed Rung’s hands gently.

Ratchet must have sent moths to transmit Rung’s decision, because there was a clamor of running feet and Rung was soon surrounded by Drift and Blue and Bee and Hound and Beachcomber and Skids; wide-opticked with admiration. 

“Oh, Rung, thank you!” Drift said, hugging him impulsively, then hastily letting the slender, older nun go. Rung caught his hands and held them.

“Drift, you know it is no great onus upon me, as it would be for you,” he said. The older nuns had appeared now and also gathered near, touching their chests and transmitting their thanks and esteem. “All right, all right,” Rung said, making shooing motions. “Enough of that, thank you. Honestly, Ratchet, you’ve known me for thousands of years, no need to make a show of it now.” 

“You heard him,” Ratchet said, glaring at the younger nuns in their enthusiasm. Everyone scattered.

.oOo0oOo.


End file.
